UX Designers Today
Some reflections I had after interviewing a good amount of UX Designers lately:
- Many* UX Designers are devoted mostly to designing beautiful animations, and less to creating useful products.
- Often, the number of years of experience is an unreliable indicator of proficiency.
- Divergence is missing from the design process of many of the UX Designers.
- Thus, refinement comes too early in the design process.
- Thus, many UX Designers are not skilled at, or aware of, any prioritisation methods (of needs, ideas, concepts) as this step is often non-existent.
- Prototyping comes too late in the design process.
- Often, UX Designers are devoted to designing “screens”, apps and websites instead of experiences. Other touch-points in the customer journey (especially analogue) are unknown or ignored.
- Consequently, there's little expertise in designing/prototyping/testing multi-touchpoint experiences (especially non-screen based).
- As nebulous as the concept of UX can be for many people, if you call yourself a (senior!) UX Designer, you shouldn’t hesitate when asked what User Experience is—at least come up with your own interpretation.
- Many UX Designers execute on requirements given to them and don’t participate in defining them.
- Design systems and animations are great, but a useful product is better.
- Producing wireframes in isolation is easier than going on the street with a bunch of prototypes and asking people to evaluate them.
I find fear of stepping out of your comfort zone, poor design culture or company immaturity, the main blockers for UX growth. On the other hand, skepticism, curiosity, collaboration or being comfortable with ambiguity, failure and experimentation, are some of the skills that I look for in a UX Designer.
Anything I missed?
*While I do use words like "often", "many" or "any" to give a sense of my perceived scale, there is still no statistical significance behind these and you are free to challenge them in the comments section if you have a different point of view.
Product Designer en Sngular - UX Designer en BBVA
5 年Cool article. Find those problems in my everyday work. Thanks!
I would add: - Often the most important step of putting ourselves in the shoes of users (or customers) - to observe the situation a user is in when getting in touch with a product is rarely done.
UX Lead, Service Sales & Digital Experience
6 年- Everybody is in love with analytics but very few ask themselves the 'why' behind those numbers. Quantitative without qualitative is not even the half of the story.
Director, User Experience at FREENOW
6 年Nice recap David. I would add: - they rarely speak on business terms or even bother understanding how’s the money made - they usually fear / avoid numbers above 2 digits
Growing EMEA @ Mechanix Wear
6 年Good summary David. Everyone is talking the talk but the reality is that few are walking the walk.