The golden rules of UX

Reference: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tree_swing_cartoon

Over the years, I’ve put together a list of UX maxims. I tell my students that whenever I get stuck in a project, whenever I feel helpless or uncertain, these are the things I think about in order to get unstuck. They re-focus me and remind me what I’m really here to achieve.

Over the last 3 years, I’ve also talked to a lot of people who are UXers and/or hire UXers about what makes a UX designer officially a UX designer. In my experience, it really comes down to mindset more than methodology. We are hired based on that mindset and how well we can actualize it through a methodology (Agile, design thinking, Lean, etc) and across people and products.

Here it is:

You are the user’s advocate.

I kickstarted 2018 with three projects, and on all three projects, the businesses really could not tell me anything about the user except they existed. The users liked and/or needed their products. They definitely interacted with them through some digital service or platform, and the business hoped that in (re)building this interface more users would come.

I have been a UX designer for 8 years, and this was the state of affairs when I started. I don’t think it stems from any malicious intent, but that businesses and the people in the business are thinking about lots of problems that aren’t necessarily user centric. And because of that, when they look through their lens of their expertise, they don’t see what I am here to see. Therefore whenever I am lost, whenever I am not sure what I should do, whenever I feel trapped between stakeholder decisions, I return back to the keyword in my title—USER. I am here to remind the business that the user is not some mythical antelope or amorphous blob of millennials. Rather they are the most valuable aspect of their business, and in the end, best practices, conventions, trends, marketing ploys, and design programs don’t matter if their real-life user doesn’t or can’t or won’t. And that there are interesting opportunities for growth if their users can and do and will!

Know when you are dealing with a fact. Know when you are dealing with an assumption. Know the difference.