“Tell me about a time where you put others before yourself.”

Yesterday someone asked me this. I gave a humble answer, which I feel is wholesomely true, working with children with Autism for 3 years gave me tons of experience in loving and fighting for others every day before myself; but, I just wasn’t satisfied with that answer.

I left the conversation feeling incomplete. I didn’t want to speak about me putting others ahead of myself 2 years ago, I wanted to speak of me doing that today.

Call me an angel? (I mean, I won’t stop you)

Better: call me a User Experience Designer.

I mean, I know its fun and cool and interesting and all to design things for the web. It’s never boring connecting with others and watching them interact with software while you learn about how they think about the world. Yes, that is absolutely exciting.

But, that’s not really the point now, is it?

User Experience practitioners are not just Psychologist Techies mapping the way for developers sitting behind a screen. They are a bridge between people and other people, and often times an advocate for the people fiddling with software that was supposed to help them but has now taken up 2 hours of their life trying to figure out when they really wanted to be outside with their kids at the park by now but if they could only just figure out where that button went and what this label means I mean, just at least how to get this thing to work “Ahhhh!”

Lets be honest here, not everyone wants to do the work it takes to create a User Experience that helps people out. Sometimes that takes extra work on everyones side. Sometimes that takes what CEO’s might call a “risk” and what Project Managers might call “time we don’t have”.

I’ve heard many things I would consider insults across the board. Simple comments like:

“Well, that’s the users problem, not mine.”

“Well, that’s just poor training, they should figure it out.”

“Haha, users are so stupid.”

These make me squirm.

Stand up!

Your job as a User Experience professional is to stand up for your users. Connect them to the people building their software, get everyone to understand that these people are amazing humans just as the rest of us are. They are not stupid. They are scientists and mothers and astronauts and just about any amazing thing you can think of.

Having a hard time working with software that says “easy to use” on the box does not make users less than anything, it makes the companies building the software guilty of not doing their jobs.

Tools of a User Experience designer are not just cool little exercises using pretty colors and artsy stuff, they are tools that put users at the forefront of the design process. They are poster boards shouting:

“PAY ATTENTION TO ME.. THIS IS WHAT I NEED FROM YOU.. THIS IS WHO I AM.. THIS IS MY LIFE .. HELP ME!”

The biggest motivator for me as a User Experience Designer is that I know I won’t allow myself to fail, just the same way I know that going into the room getting ready to do a session with a beautiful little kiddo with Autism. These people are looking to you to help them, people are relying on you and sharing their hope with you. After I’ve done some User Research and concluded a really insightful and connected talk with a User, I feel very close to them. I want to fix it all for them. I’m ready.

So, after I finished that conversation yesterday and I replayed it back in my head I thought,

‘If you’re a UX designer and you can say you don’t put others before yourself everyday, then what are you doing?’

You put your users before yourself when you think of what they need rather than what you like. It’s not about you, it’s not about your “signature design style”. It’s not about whether you like flat design or skeuomorphism. Get over yourself.

You put your users before yourself when you decide to do the thing that’s probably going to take you more time in development, but take loads of weight off of your users in the long run.

You put your users before yourself when you go out into the field, when you develop personas and redesign information architectures and test your designs in usability tests. Because what matters is how they can use it, not what your diploma says you know; not how many cool terms you can regurgitate.

That’s what a UX professional is. We are advocates who put ourselves in a potentially unpopular position, informing our team of things that our team may not want to hear, suggesting they do things they may not want to do, and communicating to others how users are HUMANS and why that matters.

User Experience Design IS the practice of putting others before yourself the moment you step into the door of your office. Every single day.

That’s what I meant to say.

I’m Jazmyn Latimer,

User Experience Designer and Reseracher. Co-Founder of ESP Collective, a research, innovation and design thinking group in California. I started as a Behavioral Psychologist for children with Autism and adults with Alzheimer’s then migrated to User Experience design and development. Now, I’m focusing on the integration of social science (Anthropology & Psychology) with technology for social impact.