This, is, UX.
Anthony Sean McSharry
Problem Solver, UX Leader, Speaker, Mentor/Trainer. Researcher, Service Designer, Product and management Consultant. Author and Actually Autistic...phew
As UX architects/Planners/Designers/whatever, we all suffer from challenges from other members of the project who "are users too" or who have "done this for years and know what the user wants" and who disagree with our expertise, experience, research and data, based on nothing more than biased personal opinions that they blindly believe and passionately defend, without a shred of data or confirmation to support them. Worse, they will tell you that the data or the user is somehow wrong for contradicting what they personally know is best.
It can be very frustrating that you have spent many years honing your objectivity and eliminating your cognitive biases, replacing them with data, psychology, user research & testing only to watch others treat your professional findings with contempt because they still have the magical personal insight that you went to the trouble to ignore.
It can also be infuriating if you work for a company that loves to use buzz words like user centric and user first, but who feel that UX is getting in the way of delivering their user centric vision quickly, because they just don't understand what UX is, does and offers. But they do love a good buzz word when speaking to senior management.
Of course this is not true of every company. Many companies realise - shock, horror - that the user is the one with the money, so what they want is probably the most important thing for their business, but I just read a wonderfully familiar feeling post by Andrew Doherty called "Good UX designers must be fighters, because compromised designs are not good designs". I have experienced and dealt with all of the same issues that he talks about, I have supported colleagues in their fight to deliver what is best for the user, but Andrew has put together some cogent coping tactics as well.
Read it, you'll be glad you did:
- You are not alone!
- You are not a trouble maker because you won't back down from doing what is right for the user!
- You are not an inconvenience to the delivery date!
- You must fight, even when you are the only voice of reason, the only voice of the user in the room, even when everyone else "just wants to get on and deliver"!
- You are not their to say 'yes' to the business, you're there to say 'yes' to the customer and often those two things do not align.
- You, are the difference between mediocrity and stunning success!
- You are the only voice of the most important person in the project - the user!
Engineer at Apple
7 年You do know my opinion on this Sean so ????
Imagineer ? Digitizing the Human Element for any Industrial Process
7 年As a producer of VR, we here are deliberately avoiding AR owing to a fear is that UX is going to be first 'under the bus' as demand for proper UX design soars. is it a 'cognitive bias' on my behalf to fear the future? Excellent article, well thought out.
It's often a fine line, as frequently one needs to "lose" the battle, (client has a fixed idea in their mind), to win the war...., i.e. to create a great experience for the user; "weapons" to deploy include education and of course, data. In the long run, though, the most effective argument is often to appeal to their most basic driver, money! Create a great UX and users/customers will come back/stay/spend more etc., and that process involves, a) time, b) money and c) the ability to be open to the concept of change or doing things differently. Look at how Square (the payments system) entered a market dominated by a handful of established players, and created a business that's now worth billions; and continuing with that industry, i.e. finance, in particular online banking, is certainly one of the areas that I have to say displays some of the worst examples I have seen of bad UX, and why companies like Lloyds are investing so heavily in their "digital offering", and not necessarily with UX'ers who are from a banking background - see point c.