Understanding the behemoth that is the UX umbrella
When I first discovered the world of UX, I thought I had found my calling. I dived deep into theories and concepts, learning industry-standard technologies and best practices. However, I had only just begun to scratch the surface. For what I had discovered was not UX design, but design under the UX Umbrella. Heres what I’ve come to know so far:
The Basics
TL;DR: UX is the study of problems arising at the crossroads of design, people, and technology. (P.S. You’ll hear this phrase a lot..)
Also abbreviated to ‘UX’, User Experience is an umbrella term to help frame the process of creating products that provide meaningful and relevant experiences to its users. The field of UX exists to improve the interactions that people have with technology by adapting products to meet the user’s needs. This involves acquiring and integrating the product, which includes aspects of branding, design, usability, and functional testing. While it is commonly thought that a UX role solely deals with on front-facing web sites and application layouts, they can also touch other areas of technology such as voice-activated assistants or the Internet of Things. Anything that the user interacts with, from voice commands to gestures, falls under UX.
Ho, Ho, Ho, It’s Magic!
So now that you know the basics, its time to divide and conquer! While the field of UX is expansive and ever-changing, it’s job functions can be essentially divided into three careers:
- Designers improve product interaction.
- Researchers improve product accessibility.
- Strategists improve customer experience.
From these options, many designers choose to specialize in their skill set to meet the needs of one pathway. This is not to say that a UXer will only perform tasks related to their field of interest, as many designers have a rudimentary knowledge of one or all pathways. It is important to note that while this is common, it is not required to become successful in UX. Especially if you are just starting, going into UX with a generalist mindset can damage your career. Go figure. 🤷♂️
You don’t need to be a unicorn, a fox or even a hedgehog to become a valuable asset in UX. As long as you are focused on ensuring that a product, website, app or interface is designed to make the lives of the users as easy as possible, you no doubt have a career in UX.
Okay, But Why?
Put simply, bad design causes problems. Human beings are built to process information, and design simply seeks to help you and as many others understanding that information as quickly as possible. Organized chaos, if you will.
Understanding things efficiently makes us feel modern and up-to-date. Just like any other field of design, the point of UX is to make products look and feel good to use — an education that many developers were lacking then and are lacking now. Good design means happy users, happy users means more engagement. More engagement means more money. More money equals a happy company. Get it?
Can I Work in UX?
To put it simply: yes, you CAN work in the field of UX. Regardless of the exact technology that you may find yourself focusing on in your career, your broad mission will remain the same! You’ll be focusing on ways to improve the interaction that people have with technology to make sure that they can do what they want and need to do without difficulty or frustration.
Sound like work you’d like to do? Great! So where do you start? An undergraduate degree in something will put you farther ahead in your journey. However, if you don’t have access to higher education or you feel your degree isn’t applicable, don’t fret! A common misconception is that you need a specific degree to break into the field. But this just isn’t true! While having a specialized background is preferred, the skills needed to work in UX can be found in multiple areas of academic focus depending on which pathway you’re seeking. While degrees could certainly offer specific UX learning, you don’t need to have one of these ‘UX degrees’ to do UX. Some people change careers into UX, going through intensive boot camps or learn the skills on their own. The most important part of landing a job in UX is having a portfolio of experience (real-world or not) you can draw from.
Beauty Meets Brains
What defines a UX Designer? When we speak about ‘design’, it is common for most people to attribute aesthetic quality or value. While the visuals of design are important, it is normally the least important aspect of a designer’s work. One’s own ability to divide and marry usability and aesthetics is what separates designers and artists. As of now, UX careers are largely focused on things with screens, meaning that UX design is often related to websites or apps (although it can involve wearables and the Internet of Things). Several specializations deal with the organization of information, visual design, and content integration. However, many designers take on multiple aspects from some or all of the following job titles.
Visual Design
Also known as User Interface Design (UI), this specialization creates meaning in elements & interactivity in the screen through the use of fonts, colors, images, and space.
Interaction Design
All about efficient interactions with interfaces. These designers may spend their time predicting user behavior, creating static mockups, and crafting product prototypes. (In this case, basic programming knowledge is beneficial!)
Information Architecture
These designers help organize information both on-screen and ‘behind the scenes’. They may spend their time crafting web & mobile resources, answering questions such as ‘who are our users and what do they know?’’
Service Design
At their core, Service Designers understand the needs & behaviors of their core audience groups — visualizing new ways to engage with their audience.
(Note: This job title is native to Europe)
Whatcha’ Know About Me?
While UX roles in the Design category require an understanding of the user, designers rarely have the opportunity to gather the data that will influence their decisions. In turn, that job will fall to practitioners called User Researchers; who dedicate a much larger piece of their UX work to finding out more about users and their usage of products.
Additionally, to their role defining their audience, User Researchers must also understand the business goals of the company and the capabilities of what can be created. A User Researcher will then use this holistic understanding to evaluate a product’s interface, often by involving actual or representative users in research studies. Communication between the User Researcher and UX Designer is key in developing a product that fulfills the user’s needs.
Human Factors
Research beyond the screen. This focus is on the usage of products in light of human capabilities. Specialists make sure products comply with safety regulations, keeping users out of harm.
Accessibility
Accessibility Specialists make sure that products are useable by all users, regardless of disability. They can also teach the UX team about accessibility and evaluate products to meet their goals and standards.
These members of the UX team refine the product to transcend physical and cognitive limitations when necessary. Websites and mobile resources must be designed appropriately to be accessible!
You Love Me, I Love You
Strategy completes the love triangle of UX. Its essential function is to bridge the gap between the worlds of design and business (easier said than done), aligning business goals with the user experience of products. UX Strategists focus on questions like” “Why is the business intending to create the products they want to create? Which business needs are the most important? What are the budgetary requirements of product development?” etc, etc. Strategists intuitively understand their product and how the users fit into business goals. They must consider how their product stands out, which makes it unique and intuitive to users. This requires a lot of discovery, talking with stakeholders and with those on the UX team to gather and synthesize all necessary data.
Content Strategy
This role highlights the business needs and goals for the product’s content. Strategists focus on the aspects of the brand from the perspective of a user, where consistency of tone, voice, and visual branding is key.
Customer Experience
While a service designer focuses on the design of the experience, a CX professional considers all other aspects where the customers connect with the business such as with in-person staff or over the phone.
Congratulations! You’ve unlocked all UX classes. But… how do these titles fit at a company like mine?
A Piece Of The Puzzle
At this point, I’m sure its obvious how essential good user experience is to good business practice. But the worlds of design and business seem so fundamentally different; how are they supposed to exist in harmony?
The design process is messy, collaborative and anything but linear. Amongst all the chaos there are a ton of methods for tracking the general growth of a project from start to finish in a way that all teams can understand. Every person, team, or organization has a slightly different approach to this method — and these different variations exist to satisfy the needs of different types of projects or compensate for weaknesses within a team. All-in-all, these processes can be broken down into the same basic framework:
- Understanding and defining the problem.
- Exploring possible solutions.
- Testing the product.
- Repeating steps when necessary.
Shine Bright Like A Diamond
Divided into four distinct phases — Discover, Define, Develop and Deliver — the Double Diamond is a simple visual map of the design process.
In all creative processes, several possible ideas are created (‘divergent thinking’) before refining and narrowing down to the best idea (‘convergent thinking’). This is what gives the process its diamond shape✨. The Double Diamond indicates that this happens twice — once to confirm the problem definition and once again to create the solution. One obvious mistake is to omit the left-hand diamond and end up solving the wrong problem.
In the world of design, there is a fool-proof way to come to the best solution: iteration, iteration, iteration. This means that ideas are developed, tested and refined several times, with weak ideas filtered out in the process. This cycle is an essential part of effective design.
Practical design methods — like user diaries, journey mapping, and character profiles — pass the light of the project through the four phases of the Double Diamond, ending in a vibrant solution. (Get it?)
It Takes A Village
The UX team must actively collaborate and communicate with both the Engineering and Product Management teams to successfully execute a product launch. Each of these teams provides healthy parameters for one another, allowing each team to work efficiently with the same goals and expectations in mind.
Here is a general core-breakdown of roles at the highest level of business structure, rapid-fire style:
Product Managers
(a.k.a The Ring Leader) Ship the product, rally the team, and maintain the schedule and scope. They are the touchpoint between all teams.
Product Marketing Managers
(a.k.a The Megaphone) Define the value proposition, acquire and follow users over the lifetime of their engagement.
Designers
(a.k.a The Visualizer) Flex their brains for expansive and focused ideation. They facilitate the conversation with visuals, user testing, prototyping, user journeys, and personas.
Engineers
(a.k.a. The Builder) Bring the product to life and patch up any holes in the design.
Customer Support
(a.k.a. The Helping Hand) Finds and squashes bugs to maintain ongoing aid-service for users.
Insights
(a.k.a. The Soft Data) Do user testing; crafting and distributing surveys to help create user personas.
Analytics
(a.k.a. The Hard Data) Measure and track how the product is performing.
So, there you have it. A somewhat comprehensive understanding of how the UX Umbrella works! 🎉 With any rapidly expanding field, there are bound to be some aspects of UX that I’ve missed or glazed over (such as UX writers! Check that out if you’re good with words 😉).
This article is really to help illustrate to current designers, students, and professionals the bare basics to the massive cluster-f*ck that is UX. I hope it’s been helpful. If you made it down here, thanks for reading & happy UX-ing!
