Support groups for designers
Why you need one and how to find it
We need to get better at talking about the emotional support UX designers deserve. There is still a long way ahead of us since many undetected (and undisclosed) issues affect us daily and do not get the required attention until they all are piled up like dirty dishes and covered in an umbrella term like designer’s burn out.
It is incredible to see how little information about designers’ mental health is available. If you google it, most likely, all the results will be focused on how to design for users struggling with mental issues.
There is a common misconception about mental health. Taking care of your mental health is similar to eating healthy every day and exercising frequently. It is about making the intentional effort of keeping your internal systems in good shape. Talking about mental-emotional support with other designers should not be a reaction from an incident, but as a best practice to elevate our profession.
Designers have special emotional needs.
When I say designers have special needs, I do not infer that we prefer macs or being allergic to comic-sans. I mean that our job requirements, the demands of our labour and the intrinsic motivation that drives user experience professionals to make us different from the rest of the organization's members. It is hard for management to address our needs and even prioritize them over common benefits.
Empathy can hurt
When we make a case for empathy to be at the centre of our discipline, we conveniently forget to mention that empathy requires a lot of work, and it is emotionally draining.
It is not an accident that the most common analogy we have for empathy is:
“Walking a mile in somebody else’s shoes”
Or if you are a Canadian:
“Walking 0.621371 Km in somebody else’s snow shoes”
Notes: Why this phrase in metric units sound suspiciously specific? How empathy ended up directly related to cardio? What our barefoot user is supposed to be doing while you are “empathizing”? Do I need to learn how to walk in high heels? How can I explain it to my wife?
Now imagine walking a mile for all the different personas you collected, for the user you are testing with, for the solutions architect only interested in his data-base, for the PO worried about the scope creep, for the developer crushing it to get to the end of the sprint and for the VP of finance that acts like Gordon Gekko. Sometimes it feels unfair since empathy is not necessarily a two-way street, and while we can do our best to understand our coworkers, they can still show total disinterest in our role, goals and success.
We need to learn how to manage empathy. Sadly design schools do not teach us how to deal with emotional whiplash while introducing empathy as a design phase. Similarly, it is common to hear about method actors getting lost on a role; designers need to reinforce personal boundaries to not take a toll on our mental well-being. This is especially difficult if the project involves topics we are personally invested in or when a project requires us to interact with circumstances that can shock us to the core, like sexual abuse, discrimination or repercussions of economic disparity.
When work is ill-equipped for emotional support
Some companies are more open to the idea of allowing people to steal office supplies than promoting the office space as a place where designers (and pretty much anybody) meet their emotional needs of self-actualization and mastery. In these enterprises, any sort of behaviour is OK as long everything happens inside the framework of a code of conduct, which can be summarized as every punch is valid as long as it is not under the belt… and the referee calls it.
Whenever your company culture is not aligned towards cooperation but selfish competitiveness, design ends up being obstructed by politics. It is painful seeing those dynamics reinforced by following obsolete org models that seem to work in other areas where the overall assumption is that everything is a zero-sum game, like sales or the force's dark side.
In some cultures, work and fun are never meant to be mixed. Work purifies. Therefore it should smell and taste like bleach. And funny enough, those workplaces are so toxic that hazmat suits should be worn in every meeting and doing a full detox before getting home is required.
I have had days when I have six hours of back to back meetings. Sometimes I get to talk so much that I start losing my voice by noon. Then I go back to my cubicle and keep up on slack conversation while actually working on a project. Then without even noticing, it is 7 pm, and the office is empty. I make my way to the parking lot, wondering how the day has gone so fast and why I did not have the chance to have a real conversation with anybody.
It should be an oxymoron to feel lonely in a company. Over the years, I noticed that some settings tend to intensify those feelings:
- A single designer in a startup can feel alienated. Most start-ups take years to bring a second designer, while the headcount for developers could be already in the dozens. They can be emotionally taxing since startups are very dynamic environments where the design work needs to happen quickly, “compromise” is code work for cutting-corners and designers need to live with the fear that the half-baked UI in the MVP might never see any improvement because the company will be out of business tomorrow.
- A UX contractor working as a 3rd party consultant in the middle of a digital transformation might not have the time nor the incentives to create long-lasting relationships during a three-month project because every second counts if you are paid by the hour. Even within the consultant company, the professionals working on your assignment could be moved to another client in the next cycle. In this world, you are a corporate vagabond without a cubicle to call your own.
- An in-house designer part of an agile team. Even if you are part of a large design team, individual members can work under circumstances that will make them feel lonely, especially if the organizational layout is agile with a single designer embedded in a dev team (a squad or whatever is trendy, call it).
You do not have a design colleague to support you during most of the day, you are sitting with the devs, and most of the interactions with the bulk of the design team needs to be scheduled as part of design critiques or “collaboration time” (A.K.A. design critiques with Figma). It could feel that most of the dynamics are centred around compliance with design systems and heated debates about what is consistent or not. - It is possible to feel lonely if you are a designer in a centralized team in an agency model if everyone in the team, including you, is a jerk to each other.
The need for a design community
We have special needs, but our needs are not unique.
Personally, I am terrible at understanding my own emotions. Not paying attention to it has always been a way to keep going in difficult situations until there is a crack in the armour and everything starts crumbling down. I am used to doing the equivalent of being thirsty and eating a bag of salty chips, thinking it would make me feel better… when sentimental bacon was the answer all this time! Damn, I really need to get better at this.
For me, it has been a real game-changer being involved in a design community outside work and listening to other people’s experiences. Being able to connect with other designers; learning about their struggles and challenges makes me feel less lonely and gives me a frame of reference to assess my own situation. I feel reflected in their circumstances, and their approach to it inspires me to find new solutions. It is amazing to hear younger designers' perspectives, see myself reflected on them, and realize that all the bad experiences I have collected over time could be used positively by mentoring, offering connections in my network and sharing resources with them.
It is magical to experience other designers talking candidly about how imposter syndrome, how covid-19 had impacted their projects and how the lack of external stimuli have impacted their mental responsiveness, not because I find joy in their struggles, but because I have been keeping them from others thinking it was only my problem and all the rest of the world has things already figured out.
Most communities have expanded beyond geographical limitations into a much more mature online presence fully accessible 24/7. This new digital venue allows shy individuals (like me) to interact with others in much, even plain fields. Everybody is already at possibly their most comfortable place in the world and wearing pyjamas.
In a hyper-connected world, online isolation is a compelling illusion. Do not wait for the right time, the right context, the right people to open up and talk about your setbacks, battles and demons. Most likely, there is an online design community ready to hear your story, and it is only a couple of clicks away.
In the scenario that your life experience seems to feel so unique that it does not fit with the existing ones. Congratulations! You have found a new niche and the possibility to lead the way to others struggling with the same situation by creating the safe space you are craving to be part of.
