Difficult UX designers

Surprisingly, for an UX designer, one of the most difficult roles to cooperate with is other designers. You might think that when designers work together it’s bliss and happy times. Unfortunately, my expectations have been thoroughly shattered a couple of times and I have had to spend most of my time and effort on finding a common approach instead of great minds think (and work) alike. In this article, I will list some of the personalities designers can have and how to cooperate in spite of difficulties.

In the good old days, like the 90s, all designers (or usability experts as they were called back then) all came from the same mold. The competence area was not new (ie human factors) but all practitioners had roughly the same education and perspective. When discussing or cooperating you had a common ground which helped you focus on creating successful solutions for users.

These days, when designers can have any imaginable background, the common ground might not always be there. Everytime I meet someone who calls him/herself a designer my first question is always ok, so what do you do and why? From the answer I can interpret this individual’s goals and perspectives.

Not having a common ground can make your job a challenge. My best advice is to start your project (or maybe even earlier) with just talking about design, prior experiences and different setups for the proposed project. This will lead to a deeper understanding of how all involved designers think.

Below, I describe some of the types of personalities of other designers I have met and had difficulties with. Most of the time there are no problems on this level and cooperating with other designers is creative, inspiring and fun. But, once in a while you will meet designers that see things differently. Prepare yourself and you won’t be as surprised as I have been.

Knows best

Some designers tend to see themselves as better than the rest of us — self assured, non-humble and above all, they know what’s best for the users. I recently saw an agency proclaiming that they can help clients with design as they are both designers and users. As anyone can be a designer that part is not controversial, but the statement that they already see themselves as users of a future service is surprising and troubling. How can they know what clients and which businesses they will work with?

That’s one example of when the designer plays the all knowing god and knows what’s best for the users. It’s arrogant and elitist which is bad in itself, but what makes it worse is that this attitude makes for really bad design. The result will be based solely on the current knowledge of the designer, in areas where the designer has little or no prior experience in. Secondly, the ability to both analyse your own behaviors and at the same time designing solutions is very hard for us humans to do.

In the beginning of my career I met a person with this conviction. He was a founder of a design company which he claimed to be unlike no other due to their ability to understand the users and create the perfect solution. When arguing with him, he got very upset every time I proposed to see what the users had to say. He seemed to think I wanted to ask the users what they wanted and did not listen to me when I tried to explain that that was not the case. Why don’t we get to know the users so we can create the perfect solution? He wouldn’t have any of it, created some drama and got his way due to his status as a star designer and my inexperience.

In hindsight I think I know why he acted as he did — he felt threatened and saw a risk that his status would be affected if he was questioned and found wrong. More power game than creating solutions to better people’s lives.

The way I nowadays cope with this type of designer is patience and knowledge. Always ask how a specific design will help the users and always argue from knowledge of the users. All decisions have to be based on what we know about the users, especially when you think you know it all.

Collaboration

The projects and challenges we face today are complex and one person is not enough. Especially as a designer, you need to be able to collaborate. You need to collaborate with a number of different other roles and also other designers. The power of collaboration is that you can achieve things you could not do on your own — you throw different perspectives and experiences in the mix and with more brain power you can cover a wider spectrum and together reach the best solution.

One designer I worked with did not like to collaborate. She just started working on the task and informed me later on. When I asked her why she hadn’t talked to me about it she told me that as she already had started in one direction we just had to continue. It was very frustrating, especially as this was her first job as a designer with no experience whatsoever than educational projects in an academic setting. I, on the other hand, had lots of experience but she just wanted to do the job her way on her own, I was only in her way.

Another designer I know is an introvert, doing his job at his desk not talking to others — team members as well as users. His team members liked him but did not understand exactly what he was doing. And even though the result of his design work was slick, no one got a deeper understanding of the thoughts behind the design and there was no room for discussion of alternative solutions that might have been better.

A lone wolf designer will not accomplish much and will be seen as a non-inclusive individualist, guarding his/her private domain, or even worse, a pretentious snob who sees others as not worthy of doing design work. Make sure the designer includes the whole team in the design work and opens up to input and shares his/her thoughts. Use democratic and including techniques like design studio where all members can express their thoughts and all ideas are considered.

More visual than value

Visual design can make strong impressions. That is well known. A visually well designed service can emit signals of trustworthiness, security, and evoke all sorts of emotions. But without creating an underlying value this is doomed to fail. Any service that does not give the users what they need will be a failure. Regardless of what it looks like. Therefore, it is sad to see designers who are all too visually geared, producing stylish designs with no or little concern for the users.

These days when UX designers can have any background imaginable, the background will affect their perspective. An UX designer with developer background will have a slightly technical view and a former AD will have a slightly visual view. It’s just natural and in many cases beneficial.

The problem arises when this view is more than slight. A number of UX designers with a visual design background I have met and collaborated with, showed a troubling preference for visual design over UX design. They were more interested in creating something cool and good looking than making it work for the users.

However, I made them have to convince me that their design helped the users before agreeing.

When I took this stand and made them change the design, I noticed they became subdued, having ruined their creative freedom and fun. Maybe they had been too quick calling themselves UX designers not realising and accepting what it really means.

Visual design is an important part of UX design but there must be a balance between visual and value-creation to create a successful solution. Visually geared designers can be a dream to work with, but make sure they don’t forget the users and their needs.

Humbleness (or the lack thereof)

One of the most agreed-upon important traits of an UX designer is humbleness. As an UX designer you wield lots of power, have a central position and can make a lot happen. However, if you use your strengths and your determination without thought and finesse you’re asking for drama.

Many, surprisingly many, UX designers see themselves as very important and critical for the success of a project. All other project members are only there to implement the solution the designer creates. Without the designer, the project would just fail. Having this attitude is detrimental for the project and a pain for all concerned.

As collaboration is the key to a successful solution, the designer must have a humble approach for his/her work. This means being open to discussions and feedback, being able to reason and interested in others’ perspectives and experiences. If you’re not humble in your interactions with team members and stakeholders, there will be conflict and drama.

I have unfortunately experienced this first-hand working with a designer used to having to fight for her design (as well as UX in itself). She behaved in the same way in our UX friendly project, forcing her arguments upon us with lots of determination and conviction. It was hard not to be swept away by the sheer strength of it. Though, I noticed exactly this happened to some team members and I worried that our collaboration effort would come to nothing.

What made it worse was that she did not listen to others’ arguments making it impossible to reason with her. I had to stop this way of arguing and make her understand she was in an open, collaborative and friendly environment where it’s the team effort that counts. I even asked her to take a step back but it didn’t work out in the end. Sadly, she was (is) a promising star designer but her lack of humbleness makes her very difficult to work with.

Being a fellow designer in a project with a non-humble dito makes for a frustrating time. You will have to create a culture in which you can collaborate. In case you can’t, move on. Your talent and competence will be better used in other projects.

Shallow interest in the users

One type of designer I have encountered does not seem to be interested about the users on a deeper level, settling for the required information but not interested in digging deeper. When researching, the effort and care put into preparation, execution and follow-up clearly show the level of commitment and interest. If you’re not curious, you should not work with design at all — you will not reach deep enough insights about your users to make a significant impact.

One fellow designer I worked with showed a total lack of interest when I, after a long time pondering, discovered the most fundamental question for our context. It was a watershed on where to focus, depending on what the actual behaviour was in a specific situation. I was thrilled to get to the bottom of the research and find out the direction we should take to make the biggest impact. My fellow designer was not interested and just wanted to move on to design.

Maybe this person was in a hurry to do good and just wanted to go on and create awesome solutions based on the newly discovered insights? Well, today’s world is stressed-up and people put tremendous pressure on themselves to move forward, to perform, to stand out against the competition (ie fellow designers). This reduces time for reflection and acquiring deeper insights in favour of moving forward and showing progress.

This self-inflicted mindset will negatively affect the end-result, just taking small steps forward without being able to make a big change. If you get to the bottom of understanding the user’s needs you will be well equipped to create solutions with huge impact.

Time spent on acquiring deeper insights is time well spent. When someone is in a hurry to move forward, be ready to take a firm stand if you don’t believe you have reached the right level of insights. Being too quick will make it hard to succeed.

Letting an idea die

To be the originator of a brilliant idea can make even the most humble person excited, happy and proud. What if this idea can make the lives better for our users — easier, less stressful and more enjoyable. That is one of the most rewarding feelings you can get as a designer. But what happens when there is critique, legitimate critique? Most designers cope well with this situation, but there are some that don’t, which poses a big problem to the project, the team and themselves.

In exploratory design you don’t have all the information you need to be sure you’re making the right decisions all the time. Instead you try, poke and experiment, all in the name of learning. In every step you will learn something new and even if you fail in your hypotheses and experiments you still learn something new.

So when someone comes up with an idea which the whole team thinks and feels is brilliant but further experiment and research is found not to be valid anymore, it has to be discarded. But not all designers can do that and instead hangs on and desperately defends it.

I have worked with designers unable or resisting to let ideas go when evidence says so. It can be very frustrating and deteriorating for a team, with lots of energy and time wasted which could have been spent on moving forward. This conflict can even turn personal when people cannot separate work from the individual. One designer I worked with started arguing for her ideas from new and unverified user data even though she knew better — she was lost in her idea. She even implied I was old! I had to stop her by going back to what we knew of the users and having her argue for her idea from our common research data.

When a designer has problems letting an idea go, a design leader has to step in and have a discussion with the stubborn designer and explain what is happening and what that person’s behaviour is causing. The designer has to realise that the only thing important is the end result, not who came up with the idea. Design is a team effort and bad ideas have to die.

Letting a designer have his/her way in spite of valid feedback, will just make matters worse. It will not only affect the project and the end-result, but also the team dynamic. No one will (dares) question the designer anymore which will make collaboration and end-result suffer even more, not to mention the team mood.

An open and honest, but at the same time respectful feedback culture is something a lot of organisations are working hard with. It takes time, effort and patience to create a successful culture where everyone wants to contribute and where everyone listens. But it has to be done in order to get a functioning and successful team.

Desk UX

One designer I worked with was smart, committed and had lots of ideas. The problem was that he was stuck to his screen and did little to interact with team mates or users. A UX guru once said: The best design is done away from your desk. But instead this designer, glued to his screen, created an aura of a mysterious loner, not inviting others to share his thoughts. He just presented his work and made a handoff to the rest of the team.

Being holed-up like this creates a number of problems and will affect the end-result in a negative way. First, relying on his own abilities to create a great solution with little or no user-involvement, is a tried and tested way for a mediocre solution. Secondly, not actively welcoming team members and other stakeholders in the design process will result in fewer interactions and no collaboration. Developers working with a designer like this will choose to solve any problems or ambiguities that arise during implementation themselves, thus preventing valuable discussions needed when seeking a compromise.

A designer spending too much time at his/her safe and secure desk must be pushed to leave their home for reality. Once they start interacting with users they will get new perspectives and hopefully continue and strengthen the user presence in the design process. Continuing desk UX will result in inferior solutions.

In a recent project I coached a junior designer who tried to solve all problems by herself, creating design after design but always missing the target. When I realised she never asked or talked to the users, I immediately contacted a representative for the users and set up a meeting. We spent a day with the users and learnt so much that we could propose an entirely different solution than we (or anyone else) could have imagined. It was less complex and required less time to implement. It took us some travel and one working day to sort it out, whereas had we continued trying to come up with solutions with no user input we would still be doing it today.

For a UX designer, the need for user input should come instinctively. When it does, the designer should immediately take appropriate action to get the information needed. This means involving users in one way or another and the designer should work hard to make it happen. Users can sometimes be difficult to reach but all designers should know this is where you have to be smart, focused and determined. The key to what you want to achieve is there.

Some designers don’t put in the effort needed and give up at the slightest set-back. This is troubling. Sometimes this is where you have to be most creative and innovative. Without reaching your users you might end up with a (lot) less than optimal solution or, as the designer above, in endless trial and error.

If you realise that one of your co-designers is doing desk-UX, step in and help that individual to reach your users. Once you have shown how to do it, it’s likely the designer will do it by themselves next time.

Relying too much on analytics

At a surprise party for a friend, people had created a playlist with my friend’s favourite songs. As the party was progressing I thought I would contribute with a song I knew my friend liked. But in the process of adding this song I accidentally erased the whole playlist. In panic, I tried to restore the original playlist but somehow it was gone. The music stopped playing and all eyes were on me. I felt like a total jerk.

On the other end, at the music streaming company, my usage data was registered and stored for analysis. The analysis must have shown this as normal behaviour, but little did they know I was panicked and genuinely and totally embarrassed.

My favourite band Kraftwerk does everything right. Well, almost. When they sing We are the robots they couldn’t be more wrong. We are humans with all what that means — strengths and weaknesses — and the most interesting thing about us is why we behave as we do. Even though highly analytical and very intelligent, we can behave totally emotion-based and irrational due to feelings, stress and cultural factors. This is what makes us humans and not robots.

Just relying on analytics will reduce the users to soulless robots which will leave us with a simplistic understanding of our users. We will know what they did and when, but never why. All this will accomplish is small correctional changes and never taking a great leap forward towards the next level.

Analytics is a valuable source of information but should only act as a starting-point for a more qualitative analysis. If the data indicates a specific but unknown behaviour, this should be taken as input to upcoming research to learn why the users behave in this way. This could unveil additional insights about user behavior, which might not be apparent looking only at analytics.

Designers only relying on analytics will have a hard time building empathy for the users. All they see are numbers. When working with designers that rely on these numbers too much, ask them why the users behave as they do. When they don’t know, propose that you together meet a couple of users to find out the reasons behind their actions. Set-up and plan the meetings and make sure the designer shows up. When meeting a real person, magic can happen. Hopefully the designer will take this step on his/her own next time analytics points at interesting behaviours.

Remember, behind every number there’s a human being.

Not interested in others’ experience

Some junior designers I have worked with have been surprisingly uninterested in my experience. I have been in the business since the 90s and have been through a lot — learnt much and made many mistakes. How come designers of today aren’t interested in how I overcame challenges and problems? Not to mention all the mistakes I have made so they don’t have to learn it the hard way?

For me, this is an enigma. When I meet people with different or long experience, I ask questions till they tell me to stop. I want to know how they have solved problems so I can do a better job the next time I find myself in the same situation. At least I can have alternatives if other ways don’t work out.

Not all junior designers are like this. Far from. But in two separate cases this behaviour has been obvious. When talking about how they have worked in previous projects they tell me like it’s the only way of doing it. They seem to be sure there are no other ways of addressing a design challenge and they don’t even ask me how I have done in earlier projects. It can be activities that I have done tens or even hundreds of times.

Apart from resulting in a worse end-result, this can create severe tension between collaborating designers. When a designer proposes a set-up or solution that I have experience from, I always share. No one wants to repeat mistakes and there can be experience in how to facilitate and improve the execution. By always sharing my experience I set a starting point for a discussion on how to best address the task at hand.

If the designer is stubborn and wants to do it his/her way, you have to insist. One of the strengths of collaboration is to utilize all members’ experiences. Failing to do so will lower the chance of success and harm the team spirit. Make sure to create a sharing (and listening) culture where everyone respects and takes into account other’s knowledge and experiences.

Afraid of failure

For an UX designer failure is a part of life. It happens to all of us and there is not a single UX designer that has never failed. If they say so they are either lying or have never actually worked with UX at all.

When you fail, you learn. That’s why, when it happens you have a great opportunity to take a big step forward getting to the best solution. No other event will make you learn as much as you do when you fail, so when it happens, be sure to seize the moment.

Some designers I have worked with seem terrified of failure. Cautious and never take any risks. UX is in itself exploratory and that means trying things and taking (calcultated) risks. When you fail, you learn, adapt and adjust. If your hypotheses are found not to be valid, you create new ones from your newly acquired knowledge and move forward. Easy.

But when people start taking failures personally and worry how their personal branding will be affected, you have to act. If these worries stick and spread it will have a huge negative impact on the end-result and your team. You, together with the rest of the team will have to create a culture where failure is expected and accepted in your work towards a common goal.

End comments

I’m sure there are lots of other examples of designers hard to work with out there. In this article I have shared my experience in hope that you will be better prepared should you meet one. These days when UX designers don’t come from the same mold it’s important to find a common ground and approach to the challenges at hand and not take for granted that you think and see things in the same way. I have been surprised many times but now I feel confident how to handle it. Hope you feel so too.