Oh, User Experience? What’s That?
You’ve been there. You’re at a family get-together or a party or your son’s bar-mitzvah and someone asks, “what do you do?”.
After you imagine yourself bolting out the back door and vagabonding to Mexico with only a suitcase and the clothes on your back, you politely respond with something like, “I make websites” or “apps” or “design”. You make a decision to dumb down your role to whatever level you feel will meet your conversational buddy where there at and you feel safe. You’ve succeeded. You diffused the bomb.
In actuality, what you diffused was your intellect. When you’re not able to articulate why people pay you billions (ok, maybe just millions) of dollars, you fail yourself and the industry you represent.
If you claim a title like “UX Designer” or “Experience Architect” or “Chief User Centered Design Technologist”, plan ahead on this. Trust me. You, of all people, recognize that what we do is not only foggy to aunts and uncles, it can be foggy to the businesses we partner with!
With that said, I’d like to offer up an analogy that has gotten me through tens of conversations through the holidays about what it is that I do. This is not for your fellow tech-pro design junkies. This is for the moms, grandfathers, aunts and off-the-grid hillbillies in your family.
Start by asking about the last restaurant they attended. It doesn’t have to be fancy. Remember, meet them where they are! (We’ll use Chic-Fil-A in this example.)
When you walked into Chic-Fil-A, the doors opened in (or out). You stepped onto a soft rug. The lights were bright and inviting. The bathrooms were clearly visible and marked. Someone greeted you with a smile. The menu was easy to read and you made your order only to be thanked and told it was their pleasure.
All of these details made up the experience you had at Chic-Fil-A. But you probably didn’t recognize it at all. Not unless you stepped through a broken door onto slick tiles or the place was dimly lit and you couldn’t find the bathrooms while you were on a long road trip.
Ultimately, the experience you had was either intentionally created for your benefit, or it was not. It’s my job to find what benefits you and design from that.
Now, you’ll probably have to explain what the internet is or how that translates to digital if that’s your role. But ultimately, this has served me well and because I’m a nice guy, I want you to have it.
Appropriate it, make it yours and if you find it useful, tell everyone how great you think I am and that I deserve unlimited LaraBars.