People don’t always fully understand UX. Here’s how to address that.
Always have an answer about “How UX Design Helps” in your back pocket
"I thought you already did user testing. Why do you need to do it again?" A developer asked me, making me prepare my 'answer' once again.
After a decade of working in the UX industry, I've encountered this more times than I can count. It sneaks up on you in little statements like that, showcasing that people don’t fully understand UX or have misconceptions about the field.
Because of this, one thing you should always keep in the back of your mind (and your portfolio) is an explanation of how UX can help you can adapt to your team.
UX might seem 'obvious' to us, but it's still a newer field that's only a few decades old. As a result, many teams don’t fully understand UX and its methods to get results.
To explain this, let's look at another field for comparison.
"UX" improves business, just like "Data Science" does
Many organizations know UX improves the bottom line.
Analytics, papers, and case studies prove that UX improves Return on Investment (ROI), Key Performance Indicators (KPIs), and other things businesses care about. That's why organizations invest in UX and why you're part of the team. It used to be that UX would have to justify its existence, but that's rarely the case now.
What many people seem to falter on nowadays is the follow-up question: "How does UX do that?"
Our methods (and what we need from the organization) can often seem strange, especially for those who rarely do qualitative research. To explain this, I want to draw parallels with another field that faces a similar issue: Data Science.
Many organizations hire Data Scientists because they're at a similar level of understanding. They feel confident that "Data Scientists can use Big Data to improve outcomes."
But how do they do that? I, like many team members, have a very vague idea. I've heard words like "Machine Learning" and "Predictive Modeling" before, but I only have a basic understanding of the process.
The difference, however, is that Data Scientists can mostly remain as a 'black box,' where their process is mostly a mystery to the rest of the team. UX can't.
We rely too much on getting our team members and the organization to understand the importance of our user's needs and collaboratively working towards a better user experience. As a result, you might hear team members giving suggestions that show a lack of UX understanding, such as "Well, do you need to do multiple rounds of user testing?" or "We can just use an existing (bad) feature with some minor adjustments."
If that's the case, you need to prepare an answer to educate your team members on why we're suggesting these changes to improve the User Experience. But we often do this the wrong way. Your team doesn't need to know about UX as a whole: they need to know how it can help them.
Focus on your team, not UX Advocacy
Chris Kiess, a Senior Healthcare UX Designer, thinks advocating for UX is often a waste of time.
The reason why is that we often get caught in the big-picture of what UX can do: UX can improve user happiness, draw customer loyalty, hone a competitive edge, and whatever buzzwords are essential at the time.
That might be a helpful presentation if businesses were still at that stage where UX was new and unwilling to be accepted. But, as we've seen, that's no longer the case. Instead, we're at the stage where teams wonder about the "How" of UX and how it addresses a problem.
We should instead focus our presentation on what UX should do. Taking this approach involves:
Bullet points on relevant user research
Relevant user quotes that illustrate the issue
How to design recommendations can improve user engagement
Etc.
Many of you already do this when you present your user testing findings, so this process should be familiar to you. However, there’s one other thing you have to consider: who do you intend to target with your presentation?
The focus of your presentation matters on who you're targeting
You shouldn't always talk about how UX improves ROI or business metrics. For many people, that doesn't answer their questions: it only justifies why you have a job. Instead, it would be best to consider who you're trying to convince. After all, convincing a Lead Developer to take specific actions instead of a Product Manager will likely require a different argument.
For this, we need to consider several different arguments for UX. These are often the most common ones:
UX is going to save people a lot of time and effort
UX will allow us to understand what our users want/need
UX will likely improve metrics/KPIs/etc.
UX will likely save money and resources.
Instead of combining them into one long presentation about how "UX improves the big picture," choosing one will help bridge the knowledge gap more effectively.
Developers, for example, will be more receptive to the message of "UX Design helps them only have to build once" versus "UX is going to improve metrics."
Doing so allows you to focus on the next piece of the puzzle.
What do you want your target to know or do?
I agree with Chris Kiess regarding UX Advocacy for one reason: these presentations should not take up an entire meeting. In many cases, it shouldn’t even be a meeting: informal one-on-one chats with people who need further clarification are often better than scheduling another meeting.
In either case, you should combine your ‘answer’ with clear next steps, such as why you recommend a certain action (leaving room for discussion). I like to imagine this process like a wine sommelier: you talk about the wide range of things UX can offer, but ultimately you’re trying to recommend a solution that fits well.
Always have an answer, even if the question is rarely asked
My entire UX work experience has been in two domains, Federal and Healthcare UX, which don't always follow the most cutting-edge trends. As a result, this is an answer that I've had to give to several of these unspoken questions.
Most of these questions came from well-meaning but ignorant statements, like comparing personas to Dungeons and Dragons characters or calling Proof-of-Concepts "prototypes."
Regardless, answering and clearing up those minor misunderstandings early on is necessary. If they're left unclear, it can lead to massive headaches when deadlines and budgets are at their limit.
So even if you work with the most cutting-edge organizations that seem to get UX, it can be worth considering how you might answer this question. You might be surprised when you hear statements requiring you to dig up this answer.
Kai Wong is a Senior UX Designer, Design Writer, and author of the Data and Design newsletter. His new book, Data-informed UX Design, explains small changes you can make regarding data to improve your UX Design process.