I’ve been expressing fairly skeptical views about user experience in my previous posts, and it’s partly a side-effect of stuff that I’m still sorting through in my own work and beliefs. Having spent many years building software as a developer, I’ve become overly sensitive of how people perceive technology and how it can be manipulated to influence the experiences of its users.
I’ve always said that anything is possible with software. That statement has a lot of caveats, because it’s still hard to make software do exactly we want it to do. And while there are a ton of developers out there coding in virtually every language, it’s still rare to find good ones who truly understand how to write them well.
The point I’m making is this – software is a moving target. Despite all our efforts to strategize, plan, research and design for the user experience, it doesn’t mean anything if it doesn’t take the practicalities of implementation into account.
Good designers know this. They understand that it’s not that easy to come up with crazy AJAX interactions, maintain cross-browser compatibility, and design for accessibility within a short period of time. This is why good designers and developers earn their stripes by credibility, not by qualification.
Thus, user experience designers and software programmers are basically two sides of the same coin. You can’t have one without the other. Even if you aren’t calling yourself a UX designer, when you’re making decisions about how users should or would interact with the software, the tone of voice the content should have, the color palettes for the styleguide – that’s basically the kind of thing UX designers get paid to do.
At least for now, UX is being used unceremoniously as an umbrella term for all that design, strategy, and thinking towards the overall experience that’s intended. This means that almost everyone has a hand into doing the work of UX, because almost everyone has a stake in that experience.
The sad part to all this is – it all seems too much like common sense. And everyone will have an opinion about design. Worse still, anyone who really likes the idea of doing UX can suddenly start acting like experts on the subject, and come up with seemingly insightful quips which may actually be more damaging than the status quo. Actual UX designers have their work cut out for them, to separate the wheat from the chaff, to bring clarity from confusion, and most of all, to address the real problems at hand.
There’s a fine line to walk between solving real problems and offering what seems like to the average Joe a poignant solution. And I feel that the only way we’re going to get it right is if we spend more time doing the work of solving rather than fussing too much about how it should be done.
Just like how books/events/ideas/etc. can’t guarantee you’ll turn out a good developer, it won’t guarantee you’ll be a good UX designer as well. I don’t care if you’re highly qualified – show me instead how you’ve helped solve real problems for real people, and that will reveal the true marks of a tradesman.
