UX Designers Today

David Cristian
Sep 8, 2018 · 2 min read
source: unsplash.com

Some reflections I had after interviewing a good amount of UX Designers lately:

  1. Many* UX Designers are devoted mostly to designing beautiful animations, and less to creating useful products.
  2. Often, the number of years of experience is an unreliable indicator of proficiency.
  3. Divergence is missing from the design process of many of the UX Designers.
  4. Thus, refinement comes too early in the design process.
  5. Thus, many UX Designers are not skilled at, or aware of, any prioritisation methods (of needs, ideas, concepts) as this step is often non-existent.
  6. Prototyping comes too late in the design process.
  7. Often, UX Designers are devoted to designing “screens”, apps and websites instead of experiences. Other touch-points in the customer journey (especially analogue) are unknown or ignored.
  8. As nebulous as the concept of UX can be for many people, if you call yourself a (senior!) UX Designer, you shouldn’t hesitate when asked what User Experience is — at least come up with your own interpretation.
  9. Many UX Designers execute on requirements given to them and don’t participate in defining them.
  10. Design systems and animations are great, but a useful product is better.
  11. Producing wireframes in isolation with your headphones on is way more comfortable than getting out on the street with a bunch of prototypes and asking people to evaluate them. That’s hard.

I find fear of stepping out of your comfort zone, poor design culture or company immaturity, the main blockers for UX growth. On the other hand, skepticism, curiosity, collaboration or being comfortable with ambiguity, failure and experimentation, are some of the skills that I look for in a UX Designer.

Anything I missed?

*While I do use words like “often”, “many” or “any” to give a sense of my perceived scale, there is still no statistical significance behind these and you are free to challenge them in the comments section if you have a different point of view.

NYC Design

A publication for designers in New York and followers all around the world. Design thinking is what makes us write here on Medium to share with the designers of the world.

David Cristian

Written by

Director of User Experience @ dminc.com. On a mission to save the world (from bad design) before Rock and Roll does. http://departive.com

NYC Design

A publication for designers in New York and followers all around the world. Design thinking is what makes us write here on Medium to share with the designers of the world.

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