Empathy and the UX/UI designer
Lace Up the High Tops - Polish the Slip Ons - Tips for Slides and Sandals
Empathy or relating has a lot to do with the mirroring (read retelling) of the prospective client’s concerns. The assumption is that there exists an opportunity to provide services through professional affiliation. Jobs for designer and coder alike may address needs which include creating ideas, initiating programs, or solving tasked problems. Technology gaps for clients, business owners, and associates have adverse effects on reaching their respective goals of increasing revenues, improving efficiency, lowering costs, and maximizing profit growth.
Listening and relating skills are key for the UX/UIer. Prospective clients, need to hear their concerns related to them in the UX/UI’s own words, their pen and ink illustrations (in my day ~ cartoons), or their selected targeted applications and digital works. Being able to put oneself in other peoples' shoes, standing on common ground, with courage, commitment, and discipline, comes from a conviction that develops with acquired expertise.
Part of gaining expertise involves researching a prospective client’s background and identifying their profit model. Adrian Slywotzky’s book is my guide for understanding the different profit models that companies use: The Art of Profitability, 2002. The unboxing, i.e., sizing up the shoes, is about finding just what profit model the prospective client’s business uses and how that model distinguishes them from their competition. As experience grows, the UX/UI individual can capture the client’s unique culture immediately. Business owners frequently misunderstand just what industry they believe they are operating in! If this is the case, identifying the appropriate industry can be quite revealing and becomes an opening for fruitful and beneficial discussions.
If the opportunity arises to prototype a concept, you get a chance at showcasing your habits* in design, abilities, and adaptation skills (revealing personal motivation) by using a distillation of what was learned during fitting: purpose of tread, philosophy of inner sole, and quality of material construction. This is the time for clean pencil sketches, organized decision trees, and concise oral or written objectives. My history is oneday turnarounds: the details are yet to be worked out, but the good ideas are clearly fleshed out and usually a discovery gets to be aired with the prospective client.
The UX/UI individual has successfully related to the client when they are asked to contribute thoughts! Now, begins the opportunity to illustrate how the concerns of a potential client, business owner, or team can be transformed, and the proposed ideas, programs, or platforms match the client’s ideal solution.
* Adapted from Tiny Habits + The Small Changes That Change Everything, BJ Fogg ,PhD
Associate at World Financial Group (WFG)
3 年Thanks Kate Fazio for suggestions about case studies. Shortly after Steve Jobs resigned from Apple Inc, as chairman in 1983, my trial by fire task, as a neophyte designer for a local soft luggage manufacturer [the company had a 25 percent market share in computer bag manufacturing and marketing,] was to design and build a prototype luggage case to carry the Apple Portable computer. It was heavy; it weighed 22 LBS, hence, it was not marketed as a laptop! The "experience" directive from the contract design consultant from the Bay Area, who brought us the project from Apple Inc. in the form of front and back shells, each laminations composed of knit Cordura and knit polyester, was "think blue jeans and panty hose." [sic] Don Norman was probably still drafting his book (published 1988.), then, albeit his paper in 1981, The truth about Unix: The user interface is horrid [sic,] may have influenced the innovators of the day. So, after scores of designs and successful retail marketing over the span of thirty plus years, you could say that I am transitioning out of UX design of [things.] I believe staying true to my authentic art skills while producing in the finance industry is my best choice for adapting into a new exciting field.
Associate at World Financial Group (WFG)
3 年Excerpt: Thanks Trina [Instagram: @ux.forthewin ] for looking this over. I speak with many entering the design field.?The shoes refer to client, at the same time, the context is the customer space (fitting room.)?"the concerns of a potential client, business owner, or team can be transformed, and the proposed ideas, programs, or platforms match the client’s ideal solution." Thanks again. Michael