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The McDonaldization of UX
The Dawning of the “McUX” Designer
I’m on the phone for a thirty-minute interview with a corporation that has a specialty division in healthcare UX. The UX director on the other end of the line starts by telling me how much out of every dollar of a hospital’s profits a hospital actually gets to keep. It’s a practiced and well-rehearsed spiel she effortlessly runs through. She continues to tell me how this position, the position I am interviewing for, will help hospitals keep more of every dollar they make.
Just what I always dreamed of — making a large corporation more money.
It only took her less than two minutes to lose me. There was no discussion concerning the impact I would make on patients lives or the lives of clinicians. She asked all the right questions about my process, background and work history. She proceeded to describe the same position I work at in nearly every corporation — design systems, agile, wireframes and all the usual suspects. But it was the same shit, same position, different corporation. I pictured myself toiling away to make hospitals and this corporation more money while patients continued to shoulder the high cost of healthcare. It felt a little bit like Bizarro Robin Hood.
I wasn’t interested.
I have been, as of lately, detecting a seismic shift in the user experience profession. It might be just my perception, but it seems as though there is a subtle change occurring within UX and the direction of our profession. I have begun to think of this shift as the “McDonaldization of UX.”
This perception I have emerges from multiple sources and inputs. I have recently interviewed for a number of different positions — reconnoitering my next major career move. I routinely connect with colleagues who are either doing the same or are kind enough to fill me in on their corner of our profession. I also keep in contact with a number of great recruiters who perpetually have their finger on the pulse of UX in multiple cities. They are all telling me a different version of the same story.
There is probably no greater source contributing to my assertion than the emails and messages I receive as a result of routinely publishing articles. Recently, I have received messages asking whether I think…
