Make UX simple again
Taking the complex out of UX
Ah UX, good old User Experience. The UE… wait…
WTF. Even the acronym is an intentional obfuscation.
Did ‘UE’ become too broad? Was the domain name already taken?
UX has become way too complicated
The irony is palpable; a discipline centred around making things simpler and reducing complexity, has become the very thing it was intended to counter. Sort of like George Lucas and the studio system (niche tenuous analogy alert).
Ok, I’ll expand on that further:
UX these days is Disney/Marvel/Star Wars. A huge machine of complexity that uses complex data to create a templated framework of products that make a great deal of money but at the expense of any real ‘craft’ or integrity, and make the industry more expensive and more difficult to enter, especially for independent designers and makers. In this grander, yet equally tenuous analogy Jakob Neilsen is the UX Martin Scorsese but I’ll leave that up to the audience to decide…
Vocabulary Inflation
Whilst watching some Nielsen videos on UX research, a video named ‘Vocabulary Inflation in UX’ popped up on my feed.
I thought: ‘is this yet another new UX ‘term’ I am unaware of?’
Turns out it's another ironic meta-example of how UX has become so complicated, that even the terminology and nomenclature evolve so rapidly that it becomes even harder for clients and designers to navigate and understand, and more crucially for recruiters to hire for.
What’s the issue?
Why is UX, the process of making things simpler, so HARD itself to understand now?
The truth is that it is not, it’s not rocket science, the people who ‘practise’ UX are not scientists. We are all designers. Some focus on the form, some on the function, and some on both. Everyone that loves design agrees that UX is critical. It’s just so bloody complicated.
Who or what is making everything SEEM so difficult?
UX is understanding the needs and pain points of the user, and making usable and accessible products that solve their problems.
There is no set way to do UX, no defining curriculum or methodology, rather an understanding of human centred design principles, backed by a process of design thinking, synthesising research into practical hypotheses, ideas, and solutions that can be tested and iterated, using feedback, measurable goals, and data.
Pick a simple design process and stick to it.
Interview your stakeholders and build a profile of the business needs, the current market, value proposition, Business Model Canvas, etc. Identify which ‘things’ are most relevant to this particular project.
Start with researching your users, and figure out what their pain points are, what their needs are. Don't ask them what they want. People don't know what they want, or are unaware of what is out there or what the technology is capable of. Get qualitative data back, create insights and use synthesise into the initial ideation process. Do some workshops. Come up with some ideas and prototype them, quickly, go show them and get some feedback. You are trying to create a Minimum Viable Product (MVP). This is not rocket science.
MVP
Minimum Viable Product is a great example of how utterly complicated a simple concept has become. And it’s all because daft people share memes like this one on LinkedIn:
I don’t know where to start with this hokey. The whole point of MVP is to ship something that works. It doesn’t need to be finished or polished, but it needs to be a shippable v1.0 product that brings value to the user. It’s the MINIMUM that needs to be built to ship a VIABLE PRODUCT. If the product is a car, the MVP is a fucking car. It’s not a skateboard, This is not the evolution of transport here. You don’t ship an iOS app drawn in biro on a sketchbook. You ship an app. Hell, maybe the login ain’t the 2 factor one that’s in the backlog, or the navigational hierarchy needs refactoring after the next round of user research insights are synthesised, but it’s a shippable PRODUCT, woohoo, get it out there, get some feedback, unpack and let’s get v1.1 sorted. Ship often, fail fast, learn and iterate.
Not one single human being on LinkedIn can agree on what an MVP is. This is because there are so many people giving their ‘take’ on what is a simple concept. Avoid unnecessary (costly) mistakes and learn how to produce lean deliverables, learn to triage features, and be practical, the subtle dance between which features to include, and which to descope/park or delay, is the hallmark of a great product team.
Research
Good research is EVERYTHING. You don’t need a PhD; you just need to understand how to kindly ask the right questions, in the right manner, and then capture the data to provide valuable insights to the design team.
Good user researchers are amazing, super smart, and methodical.
So why is there so much bad user research that companies actively avoid paying for it?
User research has become so complicated as there are a thousand techniques, and all of those are ambiguous in both their methodology and their effectiveness. None are common to all digital products, and like all disciplines in this fast-moving, digital product design train, every six months, the methods change, and the names are tweaked.
I spent ages learning how to do empathy mapping properly. Why, how and what. I finally got comfortable with the method and execution and went through some with a client, and then BOOM, everyone’s writing about how infinity maps. Same with personas. It's like Brexit. 52% of people like them and the other 48% don't. “Proto-personas are a good alternative”. There’s no synergy and no clear alignment on the process.
Job listings
Design recruiters and hiring departments are still posting job roles with no clear structure of what the job title *actually* is and what the role entails, it’s not their fault; there is no industry standard for this, as now ‘Product Designer’ is a one-stop shop role, an ‘all rounder’ and for the pure UX people it’s further diluting the quality and integrity of their profession.
There’s no end of pernicious discourse between UX folk and designers on what UX/UI vs Product Design vs CX or whatnot.
Design roles are just keywords on a CV (Wireframing, Figma etc) and no real understanding of the quantification of ‘talent’ and proper matching of candidate to role. It’s basically the same as dating apps. And this is nobody's fault as we are all trying to standardise a profession that has been blown out of proportion. Why is this?
Gatekeeping UX
Another issue is UX gatekeeping. Gatekeeping is defined as ‘the act of limiting and controlling the access to something.
It’s all over LinkedIn. Professional, well-educated, talented folk ripping each other on whether a UX/UI designer (unicorn) is something that should be allowed. Or whether designers should know how to code, or the role of research, or who is allowed to do what. Everyone can skill up. Of course, there is a certain level of skill, education and experience needed to do this stuff at a high level, but that’s not unlike any other profession. I’ve hired tons of people, if you have talent, you have talent, welcome to the party.
This issue is, of course, exacerbated by the proliferation of ‘3 months UX bootcamp’ courses, and the usual YouTube ‘become a UX designer in 3 hours’ claptrap. I think we can all agree that there is a certain set of requirements to enter this game, but a common experience in most design fields is a great grounding for almost any other design field. Any junior designer should be encouraged and mentored to be whatever they want to be. The barrier for entry is always talent and enthusiasm. Same for pornography or being a magician.
Why all the gatekeeping? It’s common for people to try to make things complicated out of a sense of self importance, sometimes it’s a lack of self-esteem. Sometimes it is simply a person of low skill who thinks they are better than they are. The opposite of imposter syndrome. The design version of Dunning-Kruger.
If you love a profession, you should not be gatekeeping it. You should welcome the democratisation, understand its limits and know that if you are truly talented, you will always shine. Smart people know this.
OK, let’s wrap this up
Make UX simpler. Make it for everyone. Make it as accessible and familiar as the products it’s principles define. Listen to your researchers, stop gatekeeping and cut down on the job titles.
Thanks for reading!
Mx
p.s. If you like this sort of thing I also write about other stuff on my Substackx
