Life-changing decisions and purpose of design
This story was written while riding a bus through the Andes on February 2018
Yes, life changes very quickly. A couple of months ago I was still waking up early, preparing coffee and getting ready for the first meeting of the day.
As some of you might know, my girl and I quit our jobs, sold everything (except for a couple of bikes, a laptop and a camera) and started travelling South America.
Professionally I had everything I wanted; I was leading the Brand and Design team at a very fast-growing travel startup for almost 5 years and also worked as a freelancer when I wished. My team was the dream team and we were headed for success. I loved it.
Why did I decide a professional change was needed? Let me clarify some concepts that frustrated and brought me to that decision:
UX/design vs Conversion Rate Optimisation
As we know, nowadays in the e-commerce world UX is growing, crazy salaries and tons of opportunities which is great to see, but unfortunately I have seen how UX is often confused with CRO (Conversion Rate Optimisation) or only used to achieve that.
For instance, UX appeals to the feelings and emotions users have while using a specific product while CRO is about optimising the purchasing funnel and converting users into paying customers. Once this said, CRO requires of a good UX in order to convert those users.
Users will eventually become paying customers if they had a good User Experience
Satisfaction vs Sales
Not much to say about this one, but it’s a similar case. When organisations want to grow sales as the main goal, they are missing out. Don’t make customers happy just for the sake of growing your sales, make them happy right from the beginning and throughout the whole customer journey and sales will consequently grow.
Yes, I believe in Karma.
Problem solving vs need creation
When there’s an obvious problem or need, a solution is designed. In our sales-driven society, once an organisation has already solved the main problem, it needs to create a new need or problem in order to keep growing. This urge of need creation can often deviate organisations from their initial vision.
And that’s what’s happening in many industries, especially in tech. For example, the well-known case of Apple. When the first iPhone was released the main need (one single device for multiple purposes, listen to music, take pictures, make phone calls…) was covered. What additional needs have the upcoming models covered?
That’s probably the reason why Apple has already become a sales-centric rather than a design-centric organisation as it used to be.
Back to the topic…
As a designer with a strong sense for environment and sustainability, this is what I’d like to see in my next career path:
- Design and UX doing their job, making people’s life easier, not just helping to big corporations pockets
- Increasing awareness of the solar energy and employ 80% of my work (if not 100%) towards circular economy
- Me being part of the solution of the main problem and not of the creation of further problems
This might be utopic, or not… but I’ll try first
Now that I hit the publish button, I’m back to that life of getting early and preparing coffee, but this time I can say that my work is more aligned to my goals and vision. If you want to know more of my latest project, drop me a line jesus@thebranx.com
