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My aha moment as a UX designer
When I started my career in UX, I was brought onto the task of improving our user onboarding experience. I spent quite a lot of time reading articles about this “magic moment” that people experienced, a term coined the Aha moment.
The Aha moment is the point at which your user has accomplished the core and basic functionality of your application, and understands not just how it works, but how it will improve their lives (Weiss, Hackernoon).
At one point while I was reading, I realized that we all experience our own version of these Aha moments throughout our lives. Experiences that are memorable, insightful and stick to us “forever”.
This made me think of UX.
What has always been an interesting topic of discussion is how diverse UX is as a field. You could be a professional gymnast, stumble across UX at the age of 40 and then decide to pivot. It’s not something you hear about too regularly in other fields. It’s also not exactly the easiest field to explain to other people as you’re making that transition (sounds familiar, doesn’t it?).
The question now is… how did you end up here?
What was that one moment where you realized that UX meant something more to you?
— What was your Aha moment?
Of course this applies to all occupations and pursuits alike. It’s one of my favourite questions to ask someone. I find that this is where I get to be a part of another person’s journey and self-reflection. I get to take the backseat as a listener and learn a little bit about what drives them.
You didn’t ask — but here’s the story of my Aha moment into UX design and why it excites me each day.
The Task
In my post-grad program, we had this one project that required us to redesign a physical interface (essentially anything that has real buttons) using the four affordances of design.
Design Affordances
In Don Norman’s Design of Everyday Things, affordances of design are described as fundamental…
