UX Is Like the Vulcan Salute. It’s Easy Until You Try It.

Learning user experience design feels a bit like learning to do the Vulcan salute. It looks easy— you know what you’re supposed to do, you know you have the capacity to do it — but you haven’t figured out how to make your brain tell your hand what to do.

So yeah, UX is easy: You figure out who the user is and what their problem is. You discover opportunities to solve that problem. You design a solution based on those opportunities.

3 steps. Now you try.

I’m 6 weeks into a grad program for experience design, where we’re applying the principles of UX research and design to real-world problems in collaboration with industry partners. I’m through my first couple of projects, and I’m trying to forge those pathways from brain to hand, from knowledge to practice. I’m trying to take what looks easy and make it achievable. Here are 3 lessons that have come from this process so far.

Yes, you are biased.

No one wants to admit they’re biased. Everyone wants to believe that they see a clear, universal picture of some neutral reality because (a) they’re fair-minded, (b) they’re empathetic, (c) they’re smart, and (d) some neutral reality surely exists.

That’s not how this works. I’m sure that you’re all of (a), (b), (c), and more, but (d) just isn’t true. Here’s my best explanation of bias, and its role in UX design:

Think about the weather right now. Here in Colorado, it’s sunny and cool. Where you are, it might be humid and warm. Or stormy. Or foggy. Now, think about the weather and how it impacted your decisions today. What did you decide to wear? Did you take the bus or walk? What sounded good for lunch?

The weather is your bias. Because I’m in Colorado, where it’s sunny and cool, I can’t make good decisions for someone in Houston unless I first figure out what the weather is in Houston. And even for my neighbors here in Colorado, I can’t make good decisions for them unless I find out what’s hanging in their closet, or where they’re going, or what they’re allergic to.

Lesson: You are not designing for you. And if you don’t think you’re biased, go away and come back after you’ve repented and embraced your prejudice. Then take a look at the user, find their biases, and design through that lens.

The process is smarter than you are.

You’ve acknowledged your bias, you’ve researched the user, and now you have a brilliant idea. Right?

Wrong. Even if you acknowledge your bias and set it aside, it will creep back in. You’ll make subconscious assumptions and then make decisions based on them. You’ll get stuck on an iteration just because you like it, before you’ve exhausted all your options. Your brain will jump ahead to tactics before you’ve solidified your understanding of the problem.

This is why UX design is a practice that relies on process. It is a continual loop of gathering insight, forming hypotheses, and testing them. This happens in micro-loops as well — validating insights, saying something out loud to see if it holds up.

The UX design process will force you to doubt yourself every step of the way. It will make you feel schizophrenic, because it requires you to argue with yourself and question the basis of every decision you make. You might hate it.

But when you follow the process, you’ll start to find moments when you hear the click. It’s when you find a solution that genuinely meets a need. It’s when you discover the missing piece that connects all the work you’ve done before. You found that answer not because you’re smart, but because the process is smarter than you are.

Lesson: The design solution is there to be uncovered, not dreamt up. Learn to trust the process of design. It’s there to help you and challenge you and drive you crazy. It pays off.

You could be more right.

Two classmates and I had worked for 3 weeks on a tough design problem. We did hours of research, mapped out insights, whiteboarded user stories, debated the most crucial opportunities, and designed tactics to fit into those contexts — in other words, we followed the process.

In class, we presented our deck to our professor and the agency we were working with. The feedback we got? “You’re not wrong, you could just be more right.”

Here’s my takeaway: in UX design, it’s not enough to put away your bias and follow the process. You have to also convince others that your design solves the problem.

You have to convince your boss that the work is good enough to pitch, you have to convince the client that the work is good enough to convert, and you have to convince the marketing and engineering teams that the work is good enough to build something real from.

There are 2 parts to this: building a convincing case and telling a convincing story. And yes, those are different things.

Build your case by creating a leak-proof web of logic that connects the design to the research, the solution to the problem. This is what the design process is supposed to help with. It connects all the tactical, concrete decisions in your work with the user’s motivations and concerns.

Then, once you’ve built the case, tell the story. Walk stakeholders through the solution, anticipate their questions, stay rooted in the research, and make it all easy to believe. There’s an art to this.

Lesson: There’s no single objective “right” answer. (That doesn’t mean you can’t be wrong — there are plenty of wrong answers.) Your job is to make your solution as “right” as it can be by building a strong case for your work and telling a convincing story.