You’re not really a UX are you?

Don’t worry, the vast majority of UX aren’t either and I’m here to tell you, it’s not your fault and you can change that.

As a UX you design experiences, the clue is in the name. Car Designers design cars, Fashion Designers design clothing. User Experience Designers design user experiences. Now that experience might be for a product, a service, a marketing campaign, what have you but whatever the subject of the ‘thing’ being used it’s the experience of using it that is your focus.

It’s at this point that we usually start having those pigeonhole arguments about what is CX what is UX, guess what? It doesn’t matter. It’s a title, it’s an artificial barrier that allows some people to silo themselves and others. If that’s what you’re reading this article for let me save you some time, you can stop reading now because that argument is redundant and repetitive and frankly lost and you won’t find it here.

No one cares but you and the hiring manager who has been given a title that they pretty much don’t understand. So move on.

So where was I? Right we design experiences don’t we. We base our decisions on a multitude of different inputs, first and foremost validated psychological insight, then behavioural analytics, ethnographic nuances in aesthetics and content weighed against societal norms, site and service analytics, branding, online and off interactions of our target user type and a whole lot more. All of this we take on-board before a single PostIt note has been scribbled on, a single arrow has touched a single box and long before a single pixel has made it to screen.

Right?

Riiiiight!

The cold reality is that for all the huge demand for UX that we’ve seen explode over the last 20 years (yes UX and experience design is much older than that but then we hid it in the shadows, and wrapped it in obscure terminology and impenetrable MMI and HCI laws with equations that made physicists tremble at the imponderable calculations) for all the commercial appeal, few if any of us get to bring our full range of skills to the table.

We still operate in a market that largely believes and demands that UX is UI with wireframing. That human needs can be shaped to fit business needs, that require the experience design to be cut to fit technology restraints (look up Procrustean Design and you’ll see you’re not alone). A market that sees their user base as a resource to be exploited immediately rather than an opportunity to sustainably grow and evolve a long term valued relationship with.

Business doesn't want you to be a UX.

We’ve all got horror stories of the times we’ve conducted months of research, hypothesised, developed, tested, refined, recrafted and created an experience design that fills the end user’s heart with joy, opens the heavens themselves and changes the fundamental nature of the relationship between our users and the business… only to have a stakeholder say “I don’t trust it, do this instead”’ where a Product Owner has screamed ‘Just ￡$%(*& do it!” or a Project Planner has gone, “Yeah that’s great but no, we don’t have the budget, I’ve just hired a dozen system analysts, you see.” And of course the BA who comes to you with an experience solution, that they discussed and agreed with the business, which fixes a business problem but creates a massive user problem, simply because that’s the way they’ve always worked.

The sad cold reality for the vast majority of jobbing UX is that they’re employed not to create better experiences but to design web pages. That’s fine, that pays the bills and we fool ourselves by saying things like ‘I’ve made it better if not as good as could it be, but better.’ Or even ‘It’s MVP, we can grow from this.’ Knowing all the while that it won’t grow because it works just enough to make the business happy, even if the user isn’t.

The worst thing you can do to an experience designer is make them ineffectual, employ them and then make sure that they can change nothing. Yet we all know places where that is absolutely the expectation.

That’s one of the reasons, I believe, that UX and CX are still so heavily weighted towards freelancers, it’s certainly not for the money, by the time you’ve covered your own health and holiday pay and paid out higher tax the take home pay isn’t that far off perm any more. The big reward of freelance is the chance to make a difference and move on quickly if you can’t.

Here’s the thing though. In case you haven’t being paying attention the world has changed. I’m not just talking about remote working, or endless Zoom meetings, I’m talking about the world of user and customer engagement. We’ve all been forced to change the way we engage with the world; online shopping is the most obvious but we’re now used to customer service engagement across phone, email and online chat. We’re no longer content to put up with a shoddy experience from our energy supplier, not when a competitor with a better service is a search result away. There is no such thing as playing catch-up, not any more, if you’re not now offering the best experience or at least on a par with the best experiences, you’re commercially dying on your feet.

So what do about it?

Now more than ever Experience Design (add a U or C as a prefix to the X if it makes you feel better) is essential and I’m seeing more and more signs of organisations recognising that, certainly the approaches for my services are increasing every week – don’t worry Julie, I’m happy fighting the good fight with you – I’m having past companies contacting me about how they can change, I’m hearing peers chatting in incredulous tones at how much their total skillset is in demand like never before and I’m getting more and more juniors and mid-weights asking for advice on how to handle the increased demand for better UX.

It won’t last.

Sorry to be Captain Cynical but it won’t. There are still too many immovable objects in places of importance, too many egos who will see any challenge as a problem not an opportunity, but while it is here, take advantage!

While this increased desire is there, meet it, exceed it. Don’t just draw up that UI, show how the online content meets the offline awareness. Point out that that user isn’t a digital entity and it’s a waste of time shaving 2 seconds off the checkout process if the fulfilment on the other side of the service takes a month and a half to reach that same person. Show how the tech is negatively affecting the experience compared to your competitors.

Stop being a designer and start being an analyst, your employer is your user, they deserve the best from you and sometimes you need to show them what 'best' really is.

Stop being what’s expected of you and start being what you know you are, a Designer of Experiences not of Websites.