The rise of extremism in the UX community — where is the empathy?
An open letter to all the method & tool haters, grumpy designers, short-tempered commenters, UX crusaders, but also to the UX extremists, design evangelists, and all the preachy designers out there.
It is worrisome how many people are making very strong comments on Medium and Twitter, although it is usual, it is getting nasty. I get it, people need to be vocal, but being aggressive and judging by the tools and methods someone is using, is plain wrong; there’s no need for that, specially when you don’t know what the context behind the project is.
Where is the empathy?
UX design has come a long way, but it is also becoming a commodity.
The consequences are both positive and not so favorable, and this means that everyone, from designers to non-designers, are looking at us and they’re judging our work, and it’s often blunt and cold. It’s understandable to want to criticize an obviously poorly done and badly executed design, but another completely different thing is to criticize a decent or great result based on the tool or method you used.
It’s fine when people question the methods or tools that someone or a business used, but there is this mob-lynching attitude between designers trying to convince that the method or tool someone used is wrong or stupid.
We are looking like an immature and amateur profession where everyone is pointing fingers, nagging, hating and criticizing for the sake of it: it has become an impact sport at a Roman amphitheater. Yes, we always have to question ourselves, our profession, our ethics, our methods, and our tools, but we are better than this messy dynamic of jumping and trying to exert opinions by force. A subjective opinion with no real constructive conversation on what could have been improved only shows shortsightedness, especially when you don’t even have a partial context of the project. You should always question what happened here, and how did they come to this solution?
We call our selves experts in empathy, but we can’t even try to be empathetic with our peers?
Veevi Rosenstein’s tweet show us how it’s done. It’s a mature and empathetic approach to seeing other designers work.
I don’t like it
—I don’t like it, it’s bad: this is not a valid phrase anymore. Sure, you have the right to say it, but just stating on social media that you don’t like a design or hate something that someone designed is like whining because you dislike a brand of chocolate. Ok, there is good chocolate and bad chocolate, but taste is completely subjective and being aware of the fact that you just don’t like X brand doesn’t mean is bad,—it means you don’t like it.
Everyone has their preferences, but let’s be serious about how we talk about someone else’s work, methods or tools: let’s be empathetic, we are supposed to be experts in the matter. Always think about context, constraints, demographics, and business requirements amongst others. Let’s learn about the difficulties the project was facing and understand the scope. If you don’t have enough information, then why jump on someone’s throat?
Let it go, nothing is going to happen: you’re not going to lose, or make you unworthy.
When you don’t have any context and decide to blast someone’s work, methods or tools, it makes you condescending, aggressive, trolly, self-entitled, and naive.
When many designers are blasting everyone’s work, it makes us, designers, look like a sombre group of kids fighting over little toys.
Design Thinking
The Design Thinking discussion is out of hands. It is obviously not wise to use Design Thinking as one tool-fits-all, or sell it as snake oil. But if you successfully solved a complex problem with either Design Thinking, Design Sprints or your own approach, that is a process that works for you.
Lillian Ayla Ersoy’s “Why Design Thinking is failing and what we should be doing differently” was the “article of the year” at the UX Collective in 2018, and although I agree on one thing “There is nothing wrong with the methodology itself; however the past few years have irritated me insanely as I have witnessed the process be quite abused in practice”, I disagree entirely with the title and most of the article: it is not Design thinking that is failing, it’s people that are failing on how they use it, but why are they failing?
I find it worrisome that it was the most read article, it’s probably because people love controversies but why is that a controversy in the first place?
If you don’t like Design Thinking, keep on walking and do your thing, don’t stop and throw a brick at the window display just because you didn’t like something — don’t be that person.
JTBD
If someone chooses to use Jobs To Be Done in their workflow and have successfully applied them, that doesn’t make that person trendy or stupid. The irony and sarcasm in Jared M. Spool’s article is a little bit intense; he’s right that one tool doesn’t fit all, but calling JTBD gimmicks and describing the designers that use them as believers, doesn’t bring a constructive conversation around it, or our industry.
The article “Jobs To Be Done: An Occasionally Useful UX Gimmick” comes from an expert I deeply respect. His reasons are true on why sometimes it’s not the best method, but JTBD has worked for many people and what Jared is not mentioning is that most methods have to be customized for what you do and how you do it: this is to say that the way you use a method or tool depends on how you use it.
A successful outcome depends on how you use a method or tool, it doesn't depend on the tool or method.
A Story about two designers
Let’s say two designers are using the same tool or method; they have the same problem to solve, the same deadlines, and one of them has delivered a better solution. That outcome of delivering a successful solution is not because of a tool or method, it is because of the execution of those tools and methods, and it is the person who solved the problem, not the method.
Now that we finally have a seat at the table, let’s don’t ruin that opportunity: Design Critiques are great, blasting ourselves is not.
Tools?
Nowadays, there are many excellent tools for helping us achieve our goals: prototyping, designing, researching, organizing, etc. Tools are important but they are as good as the way you use them, so let’s don’t be snobby about tools; sure one tool might have some benefits over others, but tools don’t make you a successful designer, it’s what you know and how you apply that knowledge.
The best tool is the one you know how to use and gives you the best results.
That logo
Oh Slack, I like your new logo and I find it effective, maybe I don’t think is the best logo I have seen and I might not like the colours, but my life has continued after you changed, it wasn’t the end of the word. It seems that there are hundreds of thousands of people (mostly designers) that hate your new logo. Does this means that there are hundreds of thousands of users that have deleted the app and signed off forever?
Personas
No, personas don’t make you stupid. Although a lot of interesting and valid points are made in this article, it is the way you use personas, and even if you use them incorectly, that doesn’t make you an idiot, it simply means that you are not using personas correctly.
I get it, sometimes you have to be loud to be heard, and other times you need to be blunt and bold, but there’s no need to continue this poisonous interaction between us, designers.
There are many other cases where designers are unnecessary vocal about tools and methods, but also about other people’s work.
Let’s build constructive conversations about what we do, tools and methods, work, design and the future of our profession.
— Very special thanks to my editor, Merriah Lamb.
If you enjoyed this article, read more of my UX articles:
A year’s retrospective: working at a growth-enabling company
Medellin, Colombia to host Interaction Latin America 2019
Medellín, Colombia, será sede de Interaction Latin America 2019
Think about content holistically, choose images wisely
The power of Designathons
UX is Design
Accreditations, certifications, and meaningful conversations
Design Thinking’s two-edged sword
Interaction Week 18 journal
The state of UX in Colombia in 2018
Why you should always rehearse User Flows and/or Prototypes, and obviously your presentation
And don’t forget to clap or comment. Thanks!
