UX your friends: how to build better relationships with others (and yourself)
Recently, I had met with a friend from college over dinner. We both made a commitment to checking-in with one another every two months or so to catch up, share stories and to see where life was taking us.
This friend is someone whom I admire very much; she consistently works hard to surpass her goals and she continues to impress me with her self-awareness in where she is in both her personal life and career. While she isn’t working in UX, the field would be lucky to have her if she chose to become a member of the profession.
Rewind to the start of 2019. In kicking-off the year, I made it a personal goal to be more open and honest with others. I had done well in sharing my feelings with people if they were positive but would often hold myself back from feedback, shying away from confrontation or criticism.
In conjunction with this goal, I wanted the theme of this year to be that of rebirth, with ongoing personal and professional reflection. Feedback on my person would help me improve, as well as grow my relationships with others on this journey into the design profession.
Fast-track back to our dinner and my friend began to share with me how she was trying to apply user research principles into her current role. Recently, she had taken on an apprenticeship program, where she served as a mentor to young aspiring professionals trying to break into her field.
As we sat together, enjoying our joint-decision to chat over Thai food, she told me the following — to paraphrase:
I wanted to work in talent recruitment so that I could help diversify my field. I hoped I could make a difference by mentoring our interns and by helping them see how this profession can improve the well-being of others.
Honestly, I thought about your UX interviews — I wanted my mentees to ask open-ended questions of our experienced staff. Projects can be frustrating for our interns, as they do not yet have the internal resources to lean on for answers at the outset of a project.
However, by stressing an open communication plan with an empowerment strategy where mentees are encouraged to connect with their experienced peers (i.e. “Please talk to [x], she/he knows a lot about [y]. They could be an excellent resource to you on this project.”), this emboldened our newcomers to not only lead projects but apply their research towards amazing solutions for our team. In this case, not only are they growing professionally but their work is also making a positive impact to our business as well.
As we continued the conversation, she told me what the end result of this summer project became: her mentee discovered a passion for their field by seeing how he could take on his assigned project on his own terms.
In being guided with basic UXR principles, he was able to connect with additional offices (and their stakeholders) to understand the needs of external clients and where his manager, as well as the overall business team, could better serve them.
My friend’s story was very impactful — not only was she happy to be able to help another succeed by fostering them professionally but she genuinely cared to learn about user research and apply this external methodology to her day-to-day work. Her empathy not only improved her work process but she was able to connect with her mentees, support them in their tasks, as well as support her team and their business.
I was stunned.
It really was not until this conversation that I was able to grasp that someone truly respected my career trajectory — so much so that they believed that the skillset I shared with them could be brought into their workflow to improve it.
In that moment, I felt like I was on my way to become the proper kind of influencer, more focused on the interpersonal compared to Instagram or YouTube.
As a result of our conversation, I was able to step back and reflect on how far I had come this year in my goals; by having these honest discussions, I had been able to become a better version of myself through the invaluable personal and professional relationships I had built with those around me.
This got me thinking: had I been UX-ing my friendships in 2019?
This one friend and occasion was not the only person I had made a point to connect with. On a month by month basis, I found myself reaching out to college friends and new post-college acquaintances to build better relationships together.
In actively nurturing these relationships — even making the initial outreach to reconnect — I had found that most people were open to doing just that: sharing and caring.
The result of these conversations over dinner, drinks, coffee, concerts, networking events and more soon formulated into budding friendships that I feel extraordinarily lucky to have today.
Looking back to these improved relationships and my career pivot into UX last year, I now feel that applying UX methodology to building friendships not only can improve one’s well-being but the well-being of others around them, where everyone benefits from a shared empathetic mindset.
And now, the big question: how can we kickoff this process? Where can we apply design thinking to friendship building?
Reflecting on this journey, I created four core principles to help you UX your friendships:
1. Befriend to Friend: People want to be open with people that they can share with, can get to know and who can really hear them in their time of need. Do not befriend someone to benefit only yourself — befriend someone because you want to walk in their shoes and grow with them.
2. Befriend to Learn: Perhaps this is the result of having spent years in New York City but by walking these busy streets, parks and subways, you end up speaking with new people. Meeting someone new can give you the opportunity to learn things outside of your comfort zone. Embrace the new in your friendships — challenge yourself to be surrounded by people who are smarter than you in a different craft. Learn from them, share your own expertise with those around you and your relationships can continue to blossom.
3. Befriend to Give Back: I have often found myself asking my friends this question: “How can I help to you?” I want to understand the issues they’re encountering in life, in work and how my experiences (or even my own personal network) can be of help to them. I have carried this mantra with me in helping young designers navigate the industry; with there being so many roads to travel into this industry, it can be overwhelming to think of where to begin. Whether by offering to hop on a call, to grab coffee, to introduce someone to your network, or even by sending an email with professional tips, I encourage everyone to look for ways where they can help others become their best selves as well.
4. Befriend to Understand: Nothing is more important to personal growth than understanding different perspectives (at least in the opinion of this author, if my prior points did not make that clear). In looking to understand the experiences that others encounter, we are able to better analyze ourselves and how we can rise up to help our friends, family and others in our community.
In taking these four principles to heart, we can begin to craft a hypothesis for our “North Star” — our problem statement for developing meaningful personal and professional friendships.
Below is the statement that I have made and held close to heart this year:
I am a career-driven individual who values interpersonal relationships. I want to grow, learn and share with others both as a person and working professional.
How might I better represent friendship and empathy to continue building meaningful relationships with others?
Take a closer look at this problem statement and pause.
This statement can only serve as a guiding light to action. Unfortunately, it is not something that is physically measurable, as much as it is conceptual.
From my perspective, it is only by living your best “UX Life” where you will be able to see if this mindset change yields the friendships and personable relationships you have been working towards. It really did work for me and I hope it will for you, too.
As I close out this opinion piece, the crux of what I am trying to say is this: UX has taught me to be more “present” in all of my relationships now more than ever.
When I share with friends, family, or someone new, I find that I am really listening to them — what they’re saying explicitly and what they’ve implied throughout the conversation — all in order to assess how I can build a better relationship with them as a friend and person whom is lucky enough to be a part of their life.
Please let me know in the comments if any of you reading have applied a similar methodology to those around you. Are you a creative professional who has applied a similar mindset to your relationships? I would love to hear from you and where your journey has taken you as well.
If you haven’t heard, I am always open to making new friends.
Thank you for reading and for your time.
— Your friend in UX, Diego
