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I'd give number 2 a listen ;)
The mindfulness of Steve Portigal, the problem-solving of Pete Trainor and the subliminal attraction of Anjan Chatterjee. You must give this episode a listen.
There we go. SEO needs the holostic perspective of UX as well :)
More and more people are reaching out to me, asking for advice on how to get into working more with UX. This is the post I would like to be able to point everyone towards.
But first, let me tell you how I got here.
I didn’t study UX. User experience wasn’t even close to a common term when I went to school, or college. I’m forty. I studied communication science. Turns out that was actually a pretty good foundation for what I do.Not primarily in the sense of giving me better tools and making me a better UX:er, but in the sense of giving me the terminology to better describe the usefulness of what I do and how it fits into the big picture of organizations.
Gaining acceptance for your role in an organization can actually often prove be one of your bigger challenges.
What I really wanted to study though was journalism, as I’ve been writing extensively since the age of ten — and I developed a thorough understanding of how to write for engagement, gaining insights about how to approach different people with different messages. Of course, the fact that I got my first computer at the age of eight, in 1982, has also been beneficial to working with digital communication.
You need to understand though that I have no formal education in working with the web, or with interaction design, or any kind of design work really. And yet today I give talks and teach at colleges and universities around these subject areas. And I happen to run a successful, profitable business doing UX work.
So you’re not going to get a list of what classes you need to attend, what companies to approach, or what software to buy. I am certainly a firm believer of doing what you love, loving what you do and creating your own career path.
And the true nature of UX is really part of anything and everything we do.
Because you. Can not. Escape. Your brain.
Thinking about how to give advice to someone pursuing a career in UX today, when so many professionals are still arguing about what that even means, I have to take a step back and look at the big picture of what makes me tick.
Let me try and outline the behavioral patterns that are common to many UX:ers.
Obviously, identifying that you want to work with UX is a fantastic first step. Understanding how that desire comes about in the people who have approached me I can see that the big attraction is the user part. In a broader sense: the desire to do help humans feel less pain when interacting with tools and services. Maybe even enjoy interacting with them (crazy thought!)
So either your motivation can be helping organizations make more money by attracting more loyal users OR helping people not burn out because they are exposed to ego-depleting systems every day. Whatever tickles your fancy.
The tendency in general is to regard the core of UX as taking away stuff that is ruining how users feel and interact with a service, and adding stuff that enhances the willingness to use the same service.
Having understood this you’ve already come a long way in you inner journey. Now let’s get to helping you make that journey a part of your purpose on Earth.
In my talks I often reference the cookie-radish experiment conducted by Roy Baumeister, giving roots to the term ego depletion.
The widespread conclusion of studies conducted by Baumeister and his colleagues is that humans have a limited amount of cognitive energy. All conscious effort requires energy and when that energy is running low, humans become worse at maintaining self-control, poorer at decision-making and have an increased tendency to avoid anything that requires more cognitive energy.
The term ego depletion is also closely related to the concept of decision fatigue.
What does this mean? It means that products and services that cause regular friction and frustration will cause people to fumble and make mistakes, make wrong decisions about what path is best for them, and if possible avoid the service altogether.
This is where the concept of UX excels, at identifying all the touchpoints where people have a hard time with products and services (online or offline) and working hard at fixing those weaknesses.
Some of those remedies could be:
There is also the option of actually replenishing cognitive energy, through design that gives rise to the production of positive energy, and in essence: endorphins. This is usually where designers turn to the concept of gamification as well as try to appeal to more senses with multimedia.
Of course, if your product is great, then it should actually already be helping people realize a positive change in their lives. I call that giving users superpowers.
You need to be certain of this, though: Ego Depletion is your archrival.
The concept of the usability guru has been with me my whole career. Go to the guru at the top of the mountain (or in cubicle 33A), ask where the button shall be placed — maybe even what color it should be — and do whatever the guru says.
Forget the guru.
A real UX advocate will recognize that her role is not to give general advice but to dig deep into users’ desires, wishes, challenges and fears — watch for patterns — and marry these insights with the same type of insights about the organization trying to connect with the users.
Also: developers, customer service personnel, the receptionist… they all have great insights. Yes, even middle managers might have some great ones!Your job isn’t to tell people what to do, your job really is to get them into the mindset of thinking about and understanding the challenges of the end-user. Make them feel empathy for the people on the receiving end. You’re not going to be there to pick at every detail, it’s much better if everyone understands the challenges, the goals and priorities and can work that into how they approach their everyday work.
The user is important, but the user is also part of a bigger puzzle.
If you are not prepared to sit in a meeting and have your design proposal challenged by a rookie javascript developer — recognizing that her ideas are valid and in many cases can be more viable than your own — then you are not there yet.
Take a deep breath and realize you are not sitting with all the answers. The users are. Other people are.
If you’re not being surprised by a lot of the stuff you learn, you’re probably not asking the right questions, or watching for the right things.
For example: many users I interview and observe have various troubles using a computer. Some are taken aback by the thought of using a trackpad on a portable computer. Some don’t understand the concept of opening the same website in two different tabs. Some can’t copy/paste content using the keyboard. Things that I know would make their lives easier.
But I’m not there to teach them how to use a computer, I’m there to adapt my user interface (if that’s what I’m designing) to the way they actually do use a computer. Within the context of THEIR lives, not my fantasy of how perfect users should be.
One of your most important competencies to develop may well be the ability to conduct an open-ended interview where you actually listen to a person’s pain points well outside the realm of the specific service you are researching, can identify patterns in behavior, and not feel that twenty seconds of silence is awkward.
Silence means a person is thinking. Don’t interrupt them. It’s those thoughts that will help you realize what problems to solve.
One of the most common misconceptions about usability and UX is that it’s about making everything easy. And what happens is that you can be stuck in 2-hour meetings discussing what font size a breadcrumb link should be.
But UX is about real people. For it to be easy your product would have to be about displaying a monosyllabic chant with an accompanying guttural sound. But we can’t all be heeeeeeeey.com — Anything beyond that actually requires some level of effort.
What you can work with is minimizing any effort required, but also with the intent to create more enjoyable experiences. For that to happen you usually need to affect peoples’ lives momentously not only within the context of a user interface, but within the context of everyday habits and routines.
You need to realize that a user interface is an enabler but also a hinderance on the way to what you really are trying to do for users:
Think again. Humans are not easy. They’re complicated. That’s why UX is a thing.
You are not always the creative who comes up with the solution. But you are the person who makes sure the solution works for the user.
The UX responsible can often be perceived as a quite lonely role. But you need to be making friends all over.
So my friend, what you need to excel at… is communication. Other people need to be confident that what you are saying is based on a solid understanding of the business, the product and the people on both ends.You need to be saying stuff like: “I’ve done this research and I’m confident that…” “I’ve aligned these tasks with business goals…” and “We have prioritized the functionality based on user insight, which has also been aligned with relative return on investment, affordability and urgency.”
In the end, whatever product or service you deliver, more often than not you yourself aren’t going to be the one using it, you aren’t going to be the one maintaining the code for it, giving support for it, selling it, writing the manual for it, fretting about it at midnight and responsible for funding it.
You need to befriend and understand all of those people because a service that doesn’t work across the board and makes anyone along the line miserable will in the end make users miserable, no matter how shiny and user-friendly it is. That’s why we obsess about story mapping.
Pro tip: make screencasts, short explainer videos and record any demo presentations of your product you may have (best case you do these every three weeks if you work in sprints). Make sure to share these often with key stakeholders to help them feel involved and give them opportunity to provide feedback.
Remember this: if you get into UX now chances are pretty high you won’t be calling it that in 10 years time. Because more and more you understand how it is an integral part of what everyone in an organization should be doing.
If you really are passionate about UX chances are pretty high you are already commenting on anything and everything in your life, noting how the logistics of the restaurant could be better, how managers use the wrong words when sending out newsletters, how the parking payment system is awry, how the waiting time in the emergency room could be put to better use or even how the inside of bathroom doors fail to signal to you if they are locked or not.
Don’t stop doing that.
So I realize that these high-and-mighty life lessons maybe aren’t helping you take the next step. But I really, really wanted you to consider them before taking the plunge. So what should your next step be?
Well actually, here are six more tips (another list! yay!) to gently push you in the right direction:
Because seriously, UX has been my playground for years and years. Truly understanding that your work, which actually means most people’s work, somewhere along the line affects whether real people frown or smile is enough for anyone to boost their job satisfaction.
Did I say job? I meant passion.
Per Axbom has dabbled in computing and design since the Sinclair ZX81. As a freelancer working out of Stockholm, Sweden, he regularly writes, debates, gives talks and asks his clients painful questions. Follow @axbom on Twitter. Also, for more rants and unsolicited web design advice, subscribe to UX Podcast where Per is one of the co-hosts.
Currently (Autumn 2015) Per is studying to become an Associate Certified Coach (ACC) in accordance with the International Coach Federation (ICF).
First published on axbom.com.
You may also want to read: Slaying 5 UX myths for the good of mankind.
Photo credit (featured image): Marina Alam
first published on axbom.com
No. Just. No.
If users were able to articulate their needs then running a business and being an entrepreneur would be a walk in the park. If there’s anything I’ve learnt in my 18 years of user-centric design work, it is that humans — yes, you and me both — are eerily unaware of their own decision-making processes.
The past few decades we have seen immense progress in the art of understanding how people function emotionally, leading to many new insights into, for example:
Many of these new theories actually overthrow old adages about how companies should approach and even advertise to customers. Gone is the view of humans as rational beings who make decisions based on logical reasoning. Embrace instead humans as they are, turning to intuition when too tired to read, making poorer decisions when grumpy and who want to buy from you because you have a pretty smile and you like cats.
But it really looks like you’re asking what users want?
I really do get where this myth comes form. We say we need to listen to users, we say we need to adhere to their needs. It seems obvious that to obtain this information that we ask them.
However, asking is not the preffered form of information retrieval in this case, even though it may look like that’s what many are doing. What we are really doing is talking, listening, observing and identifying patterns in behavior.
One person saying they “want a faster search engine” tells me nothing. Many people saying the same thing is a pattern. In interviews I may later discover that the reason they want a faster search engine is because what they most often are looking for isn’t part of the site navigation. In fact, creating a better menu may eliminate their need for a search engine altogether. So you see, there is a real difference to asking users what they want, and understanding the real problem.
The closest thing I’ve had to a user actually really telling me what she wants is when I did work for an insurance company. In response to questions about how she went about signing up for insurance she finally blurted out:
In the end people don’t really want to use most of your services at all. They actually want to be done with them. It’s a giveaway that the world’s most popular site, Google’s search engine, is really successful by having people leave the site as soon as possible.
It’s my job to come up with the solution, but I can’t do that without first understanding the real problem. Users are rarely aware of the real problems but I can get to them by understanding their real pain points. That’s what user research is all about.
(I just now realized I wrote a whole post about this in 2012: Don’t ask users what they want!)
No, but you wouldn’t be the only one confusing UX with interaction design. It’s true that many who are responsible for UX also master, or come from, interaction design. But mastering interaction design alone will not bring clarity to the experience of a service.
A person focusing solely on interaction design can create something that is appealing and easy to use, but UX infers an obligation to look at the bigger picture. To create something valuable it must also fit with
Hence, UX looks not only at what will work well for the users in the present, but also at what will continue working working well for the users in the future. To ensure this the solution must not place too much of a strain on the cost and effort required to maintain it, and it must not digress from that which makes the organization valuable.
An apparent, and common, risk is that we create something that is well received when it is first released but the organization does not have the resources to maintain the level of commitment to the service that it sets out to promise. Disappointment is not a recipe for success.
There should be a handover of user research from UX responsibles (that may not be what they call themselves, but you know what I mean) to interaction designers to ensure a design that is founded on context and real circumstance. And yes, to add to the confusion, many times these different roles are the same person.
Also read my post from 2011: The difference between an interaction designer and a UX designer
No, UX is about understanding what solutions will create a win-win situation for an organization and the people it is targeting. Staying up-to-date with emerging technologies is absolutely important; a person responsible for UX should have a firm grasp of available options. And the appeal of innovative technology should of course always be considered.
It is not the search for the new and ultramodern, however, that should be the driving force behind UX work but rather the search for solutions that do the job well. They should prove powerful and superior, but within their own context and not always in comparison to media’s high-praised apps.
Working for Ericsson many years ago a web-based recruitment tool provided by a third-party supplier failed miserably in the tests we setup. The troubles were mainly with performance. The project was terminated and the supplier lost the contract.
More importantly, having worked closely with the target group (recruiters) for three months I was in a position to reinvent the solution.
Using the insights I had gathered we were able to solve many of the user needs in a matter of weeks, using Microsoft Outlook, working with available filters and mechanisms for sorting and sharing across business units. This had many benefits:
To this day this project is my greatest reminder of how 3 months of user research allowed me to build a viable and valuable solution in 3 weeks, using a tool everyone was familiar with but had not even considered. It was very unsexy. It was extremely cost-efficient. The users had no objections.
Of course, the premise for my 3 months of user research was a large IT-project that failed and was scrapped in a matter of days. We can’t all be that lucky.
So, no, it doesn’t have to be new and fashionable. That will even scare some people away. There’s a lot to be said for second-hand stores. Just make sure the shoe fits.
No, this is a frustrating myth that many people working with usability continue to strengthen by the way many usability tests are performed. If the users do not understand how to perform the tasks in a usability test, the conclusion is often that bad usability is to blame.
Then it’s back to the drawing board, searching for that holy grail of a design solution that people will grasp in an instant.
The very idea that everything can be designed for immediate comprehension is, however, pretty far-fetched.
Imagine usability testing children who are learning to ride a bike. After 50 or so children have tried straddling the bicycle and instantly fallen over, the bikes must surely be considered a failure. To me, bikes are pretty awesome though, once you learn to ride them.
And the next time I’m in a music store I think I’ll pick up a saxophone and play Jungleland. If I can’t I’m going to assume the usability testing was awry.
A focus on UX will allow the creation of a service that the target users can learn and become friends with, over time. It’s not always about love at first sight and not even about being the most valued tool in the toolbox. Not everyone can be a hammer; The wrench is valuable too, even though it may take a while longer to master.
No, UX is by no means limited to the digital space. On the contrary it is an understanding of all the touchpoints of an organization that will bring you insights enabling you to contribute to a coherent experience.
Currently working within the healthcare sector it may be true that I am designing a tool for online therapy, but my concerns stretch far beyond the tool. I map out the scenarios in which people will learn about the tool, what doctors say at the first meeting, what the introductory material on paper will look like, how they will talk to friends about it, how it fits into their weekly routines, what other health services they encounter, and what other related tools they use (be they digital calendars or physical sketchbooks).
I work to ensure the part of the whole experience I am responsible for does not clash with the other touchpoints. Instead I pull on the familiarities of other interactions to reduce the overall friction and make the service more approachable.
When I say clash with the other touchpoints, this can happen in any number of ways: with regards to design, tone of voice, faulty links, how passwords are handled, having to enter the same information on multiple occasions, expectations put forward by information in other channels, how customer service responds to queries and so on.
I will most certainly speak up about how the different touchpoints should be engineered to work together, albeit I may not as a consultant have the mandate to affect them all. My understanding of the others will impact how I design but also how I interpret the results of user research.
And yes, in the end, I think many of us see how one could work with UX and not deliver a digital solution. I myself sometimes turn to Frank and Lillian Gilbreth for inspiration in UX work, and they were born in the late 1800s.
When myths are allowed to grow they quickly turn into walls and may limit us from moving into areas and obtaining information we need to perform well in our job. That’s why I make it a point to talk to anyone expressing the prejudices outlined in this article.
Make it a point to understand other people’s preconceptions of what you do. But don’t ever tell them they are wrong, that’s a lousy way to have a conversation, and that’s not what UX:ers do, right? Rather, listen closely to their story and share how your view of UX can be applied in situations familiar to them.
I am far from correct in everything I do and conclude. It is not uncommon for me to feel like I’ve nailed a design solution only to learn that others fail to pick up on it in the way I anticipated. The key in these cases is to pursue solutions that work, keep learning about the situation, listening and being modest and humble in your approach.
Something in my user research always surprises me. If you are not being surprised, you are probably doing it wrong.
The world of services, especially online, is also now in constant motion and innovation, so sometimes you just have to get over yourself and move along with it. My stories are already a thing of the past and the field of UX is in continuous transformation.
You know, some years later the Microsoft Outlook solution I built was replaced by a younger and sexier web interface. And some day in the future we may very well have bicycles that children can learn to ride in a matter of seconds — well in fact they exist already, they’re called running bikes.
So when I lay awake at night, struggling with my definition of UX and how I can get others to understand my passion, my biggest consolation is this: As long as there are frustrations and friction there will be people like you and me actively trying to eliminate them, whether we call it UX or not.
Per Axbom has dabbled in computing and design since the Sinclair ZX81. As a freelancer working out of Stockholm, Sweden, he regularly writes, debates, gives talks and asks his clients painful questions. Follow @axbom on Twitter. Also, for more rants and unsolicited web design advice, subscribe to UX Podcast where Per is one of the co-hosts.
This was so much fun!
Giving users superpowers! New edition just published: https://lnkd.in/exZuyUS-0d94-11e5-b0a6-0cc47a0d1609
All my sketchnotes from UXLx in Lisbon. http://axbom.com/takeaways-from-uxlx-2015-in-sketchnotes/
Giving users superpowers! New edition just published: https://lnkd.in/e-ZeNdb-0814-11e5-b13a-0cc47a0d1609
Giving users superpowers! New edition just published: https://lnkd.in/bxp4pTm-fd14-11e4-abc2-0cc47a0d1609
How to Choose the Right UX Metrics for Your Product http://bit.ly/1cPe7Dk #ux
An image about change management I sae ages ago and have been searching for. Thanks Zayera Khan!
Giving users superpowers! New edition just published: https://lnkd.in/eQfCBEZ-f794-11e4-abc2-0cc47a0d1609
10 Material Design Web Frameworks Worth Considering #ux
An Easy 10-point SEO checklist for your next website project