The usability of UX documentation

One of the most important things I have learned in my career is the art of making documentation itself usable.

Why does this matter?

Ultimately people don’t buy things they don’t understand. Whether it’s a pitch or a design solution. None of your deliverables matter unless the intended audience finds them usable and understandable.

And this is even more critical, now that we are working more and more in a remote context, presenting down the internet rather than face-to-face or worse, slinging something over slack or email and hoping it lands as we intended.

You are not the user

Just like everything else we do as UX designers, deliverables have a user. The user is not you. Before creating any UX or project artifact therefore, it is essential consider who the audience is.

If the user cannot use your deliverables, then these are the potential consequences:

• Designers or devs may not make your intended changes
• Clients may not buy into your design solutions
• Someone may change your work without understanding the implications
• Clients may de-scope, de-prioritise your involvement in the project
• (Most importantly) Your users may not get the experience you intended

This is not to say that your outputs do not need to be visually appealing. This is to say that IT DEPENDS, where the weighting is between utility and creativity.

As with any design gig, it’s got to be a balance between usability and creativity.

Maslow applied

One of my favourite finds of recent weeks is this old article on Smashing Mag, which adapts Maslow’s hierarchy of needs to design.

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