User Experience is not craft, it’s art

First, some definitions:
ART: The heightened consciousness, emotions, or spirit that emanates from and is evoked by some object or action. Examples: a musical performance makes us feel joy or sadness (in either audience or performer), a painting causes us to think about our shared human history, a film emboldens our spiritual resolve to be courageous, etc.
CRAFT: A skill applied to material. May be words on a page or bricks in a fire — it needn’t be tangible but it is a thing. Examples: piecing together sounds in their harmonic relationships, using color to create geometric patterns, writing a story to be performed on stage, etc.
The relationship between these is that we use craft in order to create art. In other words — we may want to evoke the feeling of anguish through music, but if we don’t master the specific crafts of musicianship (e.g. composition and playing, perhaps even building instruments) — then it’s not going to happen. Notes will simply become noise.
On the other hand, mastery of craft is merely a prerequisite. A computer-driven synthesizer can be programmed via algorithms to determine the mathematically correct sequence of notes in order to fulfill various rules of established music theory on par with Beethoven, but that does not guarantee it will actually move us like Beethoven or, for that matter, the Beatles.
So what in the world does any of this have to do with software development?
As creators, we conjure up empathy and project ourselves into the imagined user — we experience what they will on all these nuanced non-physical levels. Ultimately, user experience is a mind/heart/soul question.
It’s making a user feel comfortable (or at least not frustrated). It’s empowering them to think with less friction about what they want to accomplish. It’s keeping them focused on our product and not the 101 other tabs of content jockeying for attention.
But how do we do this? We use our craft. We create menus that are easy to navigate, color schemes that are pleasant (or decidedly unpleasant if that’s the goal), we bundle data for faster loading times. We apply skill to material.
This is why I cringe when I encounter the concept of a UX expert. There is no such thing. At least not as a standalone skill devoid of the medium it’s expressed in. Expertise is an issue of craftsmanship. Picasso honed his craft as a painter until he could wield the brush and use it to express himself as an artist. Despite how some of his later work might appear to an untrained eye (like mine) — he was an expert painter. As an artist, well, he had a strong impact on humanity and made people think. Perhaps a colleague of Picasso could sit down and have a chat with him about how well he is using his craft to create art — but that’s an issue of encouragement and feedback and, to an extent, subjective taste. It’s silly to say that Picasso is more of an artist than Vermeer, Escher, or Banksy. They all created an artistic effect through their work, and it’s not quantitative. It’s even more silly to say that Picasso is more of an artist than whoever your favorite musician or dancer is.
Now, what about people who bill themselves as “UX experts” — are they just talentless hacks who have nothing of value to contribute? An honest answer would be yes and no, so I’ll break that down.
Because craft is a prerequisite for art, the only way to give actionable UX advice is through craft: specifics of how to change copy, how to use accessible web controls, how to program more efficiently. It’s simply not possible to say “you can improve the user experience by X” without stating what “X” actually is! (even if what it is, is a rough feature list or initial concept)
With that in mind — UX is not a separate role. It’s the artistic drive of the developer, UI designer, product owner, idea person, etc. It’s really just their process, how they will achieve a non-tangible effect in the imagined user.
So that’s the “yes” part, how about “no”? Well… sometimes we need prodding. It’s all well and good to say that a good UI designer will think about things in terms of user experience… but sometimes they don’t. I consider this kind of UX expert as much less an executive role and more like a sounding board to bounce ideas off. You might need their advice, and it’s good to have them around, but they don’t have the expertise to translate it into action.
I’ll explain a bit more using the music analogy. Let’s say someone is an “emotional experience expert” (if that sounds funny, it’s even less encompassing than “user experience expert” a.k.a. “human experience expert”)
Okay so we’ve got our “emotional experience expert”. Now let’s say they are contracted by a professional music group in order to give advice. What’s the emotional experience expert going to say? Stuff like — “what emotion are you aiming for the audience to have? Let’s put ourselves in their shoes and go through the song… how do you feel at around a minute in? I feel happy, is that what you’re going for? Oh you’re going for sad? Well here’s some songs from other bands that make most people feel sad, etc.”
Now this isn’t totally useless — it’s valuable feedback. BUT — it’s not actionable and, forgive me, it’s not really expertise. It’s simply a person reminding everyone to stay on target. That’s it. In fact it can be terribly frustrating for the musicians — imagine if the examples the expert brought were in completely unrelated or non-applicable genres, and even worse, the expert were given the mandate to force those changes!
What would be helpful is if the expert could not only go through the process of keeping everyone on the right artistic wavelength, but also give actual music advice! Like, “try this chord instead of that one, rest for another measure, etc.” (I’m not a musician — so forgive the trite example). Ah, now in this example, the musician with the greatest EX sensitivity might even be a better decision maker than the musician with the greatest craft. It could make sense here to give them the product owner role (or whatever the equivalent is).
In summary, I’d say that as an industry we should banish the idea of UX experts as a standalone skill. Empathy for our users should be a given. We all need to be UX experts within our specific fields. If fixing user experience problems require applied skills that aren’t in our domain, that’s when we collaborate with others who do have those skills in order to solve it. And those others need to have both the prerequisite craft skills, and the sensitivity to express it for artistic (e.g. user experience) goals.
