Why UX practitioners need resilience and how to get more of it

7 min readApr 1, 2020

UX is one of those fields where individual resilience is key for many roles. Fortunately there are loads of resources available including research, theoretical frameworks and probably a billion self-help books. The aim for this article is to share specifics that I’ve found useful for myself and teams I’ve worked with.

What do we mean by “resilience”

Merriam-Webster defines resilience as:

“an ability to recover from or adjust easily to misfortune or change”

i.e. something bad happens and rather than collapsing in a heap, you find a way through it. A measure of resilience therefore could be how fast you bounce back.

What dictates how resilient you are?

There are lots of different theories and views on resilience, but fairly consistently it is thought that:

1. A certain base level of resilience is developed through childhood, via caregiver support and nurturing.

2. Resilience can be built on and developed as an adult.

Lego figure of a night being stepped on by a shoe

Why do UX people need to be resilient?

Roles vary massively in UX. You can have a career where comparatively little resilience is needed. You could go straight from the ivory tower of academia to a UX agency or government freelance work and never encounter The Nonsense.

Or you could work in a Marketing Agency where every day is a battle to get user needs heard, considered and prioritised.

One route clearly has less risk of people wilfully undermining the UX process, however in my experience no matter how safely ensconced you are in the world of Best Practice and Doing Things Properly, you could still, at any time, be confronted with any of the following scenarios*:

You have a client who (brace yourselves) doesn’t actually care about the science, the users, or the evidence and just wants to design the thing in their head because they are the user and they pay the fees.
You have a Creative Director who throws away all the UX strategy, IA, wireframes and evidence-based design work because they have “a vision”.
You have a boss or sales team who has hideously under-scoped a project and you have to decide between meeting a deadline with shit work or killing yourself to deliver to your own standards.
You lose a brilliant colleague with whom you do your best work
You lose a brilliant client who recognises and pays for The Science to be done properly
A colleague (possibly your CEO) pretends something is evidence-based when it’s bullshit — and you are put on the spot to defend it publicly.

* yes, I have experienced all of these. And more.

Lego figure of a person dressed as a chicken

Resilience is how you deal with these things without totally losing your shit, or having a breakdown, or walking out of your job, or getting hugely depressed, or becoming seriously angry at everyone around you.

And let’s face it, right now resilience is something we all need. Imagine any of the above issues occurring while working from home, having no face-to-face time with any of your colleagues, and not being around the office to influence any of the shit that might be coming at you down the pipes.

That’s right — you don’t have to imagine it.

How can UX people become more resilient?

There are plenty of ways to increase your personal and professional resilience as an adult.

Most of these have to do with mindset. And I know, because I’ve survived many years’ working in Marketing Agencies so I’ve had plenty of practice.

Accept failure — you are going to mess things up. Work can fail, a project can fail, a design can fail (actually many designs are designed to fail — it’s called iteration), a job can fail. It doesn’t mean you have.
Be a teacher — people are going to not understand what you do. Explain to them patiently and repeatedly and consistently.
Be a student of science — keep learning. The best defence is knowledge and the application of science. Hold the uncertainty, hold the line in the face of nonsense.
Acknowledge how far you’ve come — wherever you are in your UX career, you’ve already come a long way. Recognise that, but with an eye to the future.
Laugh — I know it sounds silly, but honestly you have to laugh at the situations and the idiots and yourself otherwise you will lose it completely, and it will impact on those around you.
Connect — find others who may have experienced something similar and understand how they moved through it.

Lego figure of a storm trooper, painting

Get a side hustle — find a way to distract yourself if only to give yourself a break, but make it challenging enough to exercise your brain.
Know when to walk away — some people are just assholes who don’t care about users. Darwinian principles will take care of them. Cut your losses and save yourself. Live to fight another day.

However, amongst all theories of developing and increasing resilience however is my personal favourite; the concept of the Stockdale Paradox. I swear this saved my life and my sanity on more than one occasion.

What is the Stockdale Paradox?

Essentially it is the concept of holding in your brain, at the same time, two distinctly separate “known” things:

A) This thing in front of me right now is shit and I have to deal with it

B) That thing over there is my long-term goal and I will prevail.

By moving your brain’s focus back and forth between the two, you neither get stuck in “everything is shit!!!” and have a melt down, nor spend too much time staring at a future object you fear you will never achieve.

It turns both A and B into positives rather than negatives, thus correcting any negative thinking and increasing the likelihood of success or positive outcomes, as far as your own mindset and attitude can influence it.

Essentially it reinforces your self-efficacy and sense of agency by

A) — Accepting the reality, being a grown up and dealing with it

B) — Holding on to your core ambition, drive and belief in your own future

Diagram of a continuum for the Stockdale Paradox. Source: medium.com/@h_locke — Outline of the Stockdale Paradox. Source: medium.com/@h_locke

How do you apply Stockdale to UX career scenarios?

Here are some example scenarios in UX world:

Scenario 1: Your team doesn’t understand what you do

Mindset A) This is difficult and every day I must strive patiently to make them understand without losing my mind. Here is my daily plan on how I’m going to do that.

Mindset B) This is only now, and my long-term goal which I will attain is a utopia where everyone on this team and beyond will have a robust understanding of my skillset and my value.

Scenario 2: Your boss constantly undermines your ability to deliver good work

Mindset A) I have to deal with this person every day, and I will find new ways each day to maximise the quality of my work around him/her

Mindset B) This person is not my ideal boss. In my next job, my boss will have the following characteristics…

Scenario 3: The client just dismissed all the research findings because of Reasons

Mindset A) Well shit. I will explain the risks, however it is their choice. I have done my job. I can’t force them to stop being self-destructive

Mindset B) I have learned a lot more about <user group> and <behaviour> and am adding to my long term career goals where I will use these techniques to achieve <insert future vision here>.

Get the idea?

Lego figures from the starwars movies, yoda being lifted by other characters.

It works if you work it

For whatever scenario you find yourself facing into in your UX career, you’ll find you can hold a short term challenge and a long(er) term goal in your head simultaneously.

It can be for a tiny issue that will be resolved within a week, or a complete long-term career goal.

You do have to keep reinforcing it into your own brain though, so some minimal effort is required. However, much like other practices such as yoga or meditation, purely by the conscious practice of this process you will gradually develop more resilience for the challenges ahead. And prevent yourself from going postal in the short term.