Lessons learned in my first years as UX designer
In a global leader in consulting, technology services and digital transformation
Being a designer inside a big consulting corporation is a challenging experience both for what I thought about design and for what I thought about corporate issues.
I came from digital publishing where I was working as graphic designer. That world still follows the old rules of publishing: you have editors, graphic designer, directors, distributors and so on and so forth. As digital designer, I had just to transfer the same rules into the digital world. At the end of the day it was all about put text and pictures on a page with the good old ADV centric business model.
Once I enter the consulting world, even though under the name of a design agency, I faced another layer of reality: the business model was no more selling ADV to the advertiser promising tons of views. The business model become to bring value to both our clients and our colleagues from other business units. Nevertheless at the first glance seemed to me that the one and only KPI to measure this value was the total amount of hours billed.
Design methods, created to maximize design efficiency challenging the client internal preconceptions, became useless. Instead, it seemed that the method was taking a little amount of time to scramble estimations of time and features done by the other units right before the kickoff of the project. I felt like I was between the hammer of small-time job and the anvil of not being able to change what sold. It seemed nobody cared about the overall experience for the users, indeed delivering a great experience was nothing compared to exchanging money for hours between companies.
We could access big corporation with their big projects, ready to make a great impact in society but, as designer, we weren’t able to bring real value.
I started pondering about the unfeasibility of design action in a consulting environment. However, the truth is: every design firm is today part of a bigger consultancy corporation and designers will always be a “consultant” for their clients. So, I decided to think deeper, broader, and better.
I ended up with an unordered list of things I learned in this few years. I’ll try to not mention brands and people. If someone will feel insulted by my words, please let me know and I will try to rephrase the wording to my best ability. My intention will never be to complain about the valuable lessons I’ve learned, but rather to use the purest honesty to help someone find something valuable or, at least, feel better about knowing there is someone who did the same mistakes.
Lesson 1 — No one want to abdicate the throne.
Why Design is engaged by IT units and why there is nothing wrong about it.
Lesson 2 — Never give up on asking “why?”
Asking this simple question forces everyone to look at the logic and proof behind the decision already made, only there it’s possible to challenge the “as always done before” mindset.
Lesson 3 — Computers don’t do what you want them to do, they do what you tell them to do.
Computers execute tasks; even with the most sophisticated AI technology they can only guess what the user had in mind when a button is pressed.
Lesson 4 — The communication is our responsibility
Never accuse engineers for the lack of visual and narrative skills. They have not and they are quite honest about that. Design is a matter of communication, even with colleagues and clients.
Lesson 5 — Use designer’s tools in storytelling to grow consensus about the project
Things like personas, user journey, user flow, wireframe, prototypes etc. are useful instruments to deliver a great user experience. I usually treated them like quick and dirty drafts. How could change the way we communicate our work with internal stakeholder if we start to consider those tools like products themselves?
Lesson 6 — Stop feeling guilty on using UI framework and Themes
A brand-new design system not always match the needs of the client. Sometimes it’s better to not reinvent the wheel, use the client budget on producing what really matter and buy what is not critical.
Lesson 7 — User stories are a waste of time.
If they are written in the concept phase and not related to something developable. They are also a waste of time and energy if the team is not aligned to the methodology.
Lesson 8 — Design team has to be small.
Small and consistent during the whole elapsed time of a project.
Lesson 9 —Is our low cost perceived as low value?
We play our game in a world of huge IT supply and maintenance stream. What’s the value for the account on up-sell a week of designer sprint?
Lesson 10— The subtle art of estimating.
In a consultancy world, being able to estimate is everything. Budget, staffing, people, reports: everyone’s life turns into estimating efforts. That’s why designers need to know how to plan activities without losing their soul and their smile.
Lesson 11 — Be human centric.
It’s very tempting to choose the side of technology. There are plenty of professionals who cares about tech issues. We are in charge to take care of the human being.
Lesson 12 — What’s the meaning of design?
There’s the need of more discussion about finality of design. Keep talking only about methodology and tools and business perspective may distract us from what really matter.
Lesson 13 — You don’t have to learn all the lessons by yourself.
Here I will collect some thoughts from my colleagues.
I try to explore all the lessons above to find more useful learnings. If someone of you want me to explore something deeper, please ask me in comments.
Sapere aude
Manuel
