CREATOR SPOTLIGHT
The UX Designer Who Thinks Deep
Chris Kiess runs a Medium publication called ‘Design Koans’
Here on Creators Hub, we’ve been featuring writers we admire on the platform. This month, it’s Chris Kiess, a UX designer and researcher who works in the health care industry and maintains a regular blog called Design Koans. We love how his work illuminates the world of user experience design, while also encouraging readers to think deeply about how we interact with our world.
We asked Chris some questions over email. He shared a bit of what he’s learned in his more than seven years of writing on Medium, including how blogging helps him in his career, how to keep the faith when writing feels like a slog, and how he gets unstuck.
This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.
Creators Hub: If someone only read one of your Medium posts, which should it be and why?
Chris Kiess: What a great and yet difficult question to answer. I started writing on Medium in 2015. That’s a lot of articles (130 and counting) and choosing only one is a challenge. What makes it even more difficult is that the articles we writers favor are not always the articles our audience favors.
Taking audience statistics into account, “Nobody told me UX would be like this” is probably the best place to start and one of my personal favorites. It’s self-help or inspiration for designers based on my own career experiences and it encompasses so many repeating themes in my writing — design philosophy, professional growth, organizational behavior, and lessons learned in my career.
There are so many links in that article to previous pieces I had written. I always felt “Nobody told me UX would be like this” was a good consolidation of those ideas. But in another respect, it was an article that allowed me to expand on some of those previous themes. I also liked the way I was able to end what might be considered a very negative article on a positive and uplifting note.
How has writing on Medium helped you develop your voice as a writer?
A writer can have a voice, a great voice, and still not know if that voice resonates with any particular audience.
When I first started writing on Medium, my intention was to simply develop a writing habit. But I also thought I could explore different topics, eventually using the posts or topics to author a book and pursue a more traditional publishing route. When you consider traditional publishing, a first-time author can work on a print book for years, and maybe only a handful of people will give them feedback. But Medium allows me to reach the entire globe where readers can comment instantly and I can review analytics.
It took a few years of steady writing, but today Medium allows me to publish an article and determine within a week or two (with some exceptions) whether the topic resonates — whether my voice is hitting the mark. Compare that to years in traditional publishing.
Medium allows me to adjust my voice with each post I publish through quick feedback and analytics.
What are the last three profiles you’ve followed on Medium?
Kem-Laurin Lubin, PH.D - C, Doctor as Designer, and Aayla Anderson.
Is there a specific feature of Medium you really enjoy?
We’re all busy and it is hard to keep up with the amount of information published daily. So, I absolutely love the recent effort to highlight content of the writers you follow. The redesigned landing page highlights recent posts from authors you follow at the top and the new subscription feature sends an author’s post straight to my inbox so I never have to go back through a writer’s catalog to catch up on what they have written. This is obviously beneficial to both writers and readers.
What do you wish you’d known before starting to write on Medium?
I wish I would have known how wonderful and wild the ride was going to be. The first few years are rough. You likely don’t have a large audience and are slugging out articles, not really understanding your impact. But like I always tell aspiring writers: If you do the work and are consistent, success will come in some form.
That’s hard to imagine when your relatives and colleagues are the only people reading your work. But eventually, someone you never met tweets your post with a positive comment and it is enough to keep you working through that next piece of writing. Then it happens again or a publication picks up an article and your efforts begin to pay off.
I can’t tell you how many readers have reached out to me seeking career advice or advice on some design topic I have written about. We write to communicate — to express some idea or concept from our unique perspective. We write to make an impact.
I never dreamed of the success I have achieved on Medium or how great an impact my writing would have on the design community. Had I known that, it might have made those first few years a little less rough.
What’s the best piece of writing and/or creativity advice you’ve ever gotten?
I once had a journalism professor tell me to “always have a side gig.” What she meant by this was to have a side project or something else to work on when your primary writing project isn’t going well.
We’re writers. We get stuck. We hem and we haw, procrastinating over a piece of writing that just isn’t working. Or maybe you get into it and realize you need to conduct a bit more research or think through it a little more. Having another project or two on the back burner lets your mind shift gears. New topic, new focus. While your mind is working on the new topic, the old topic is churning in your subconscious.
I have become “unstuck” many times using this technique and I almost always have at least three pieces working in parallel. It doesn’t mean I am working on them all in parallel. But I’ll outline them a little and have them sitting there ready for when I get stuck.
The best thing about this technique is that it keeps you writing. You never have an excuse to not write a sentence… and then another. It’s a productivity hack.
More creators to follow:
Management strategist Roger Martin
Humor writer Kyrie Gray
Personal development specialist Amardeep Parmar
Community creator Allison Gaines
Blogger-to-book author Elisabeth Ovesen
Technology thought leader Camille Fournier
Former nurse, now health writer Gillian May
Tell us in the responses who you think we should be following!
