The importance of ownership in design
Roots Episode 004: Party Boy of UX — Mark Lacsamana
Working the advertising industry for the most part of his early career taught Mark Lacsamana a lot about the advertising industry ever since college, he knew what he wanted to be: a designer. In college, he learned a lot about marketing, communication theory, and statistics in both his classes and his orgs, which ultimately led him to become more and more passionate about UX. This led him to pursue UX-related ventures: starting a company with peers, working in an advertising agency, and, eventually, working in Kalibrr. Overall, his experiences taught him a lot about ownership.
Here’s a run through of what Mark learned with regards to ownership in design.
Getting your message across
A lot of the work in UX includes prototyping, visual design, and strategizing. However, what gets overlooked most of the time is communication. It’s so basic, it’s easily neglected; it’s neglected because it’s so basic — a cycle that needs to be broken to create proper work. It’s important that you are able to make people understand what you’re trying to solve. After all, the problems of your target market problems create the very foundation of your work. As a UX designer, you are a problem-solver. How can your target market be receptive to your work if you can’t explain it properly yourself? After all, communication is a two-way street, and design is a collaborative art.
Ownership — what is it?
Working in big companies mean that there’s a hierarchy, and when there’s a hierarchy, there are delays. To be specific, the kind of delay we’re referring to comes in the form of misplaced ownership. As a UX designer, you will need a lot of freedom to experiment and to think outside the box to find many ways to solve all sorts of problems. However, if you find that you are working for someone who doesn’t really care about the user, or someone who doesn’t have the standard amount of empathy for the people they serve, you will find yourself in a tight spot. People working in UX need these qualities to create quality work. After all, design is in and of itself a vocation geared towards other people. It is useless if it serves yourself or only one person.
“Ownership is about process, ideas, people, and the product itself.”
The problem with CEOs or bosses who don’t truly empathize with the user is that UX designers end up creating things for the sake of their approval. This is what we mean by misplaced or a lack of ownership. The designer no longer holds the reigns of what they’re doing and their work loses its substance along the way. The opposite holds true for UX designers who do have ownership: you are able to put your heart into your work and you are able to make someone else’s life better — the goal of UX to begin with. Ask yourself this: ‘Why become a UX designer if you don’t care about the problems of the people you’re helping?’
Ownership in a nutshell:
- Caring about what happens after you’ve submitted or completed your work
- Making sure that people are able to produce good work
- Knowing when something is not passable or usable anymore
Not for the weak of will
Working in UX requires a lot of empathy. It will open your heart to problems you never thought existed. A lot. It will make you wonder why things are a certain way and how it has hindered people from doing a lot of things. It could be a very fulfilling job, especially when you’ve done good work, but you will be frustrated for the most part. Once you put your UX hat on, you will find a lot of problems in the most mundane things.
“ UX is a really easy field to get discouraged about. You will always end up getting disappointed in UX.”
Going back to empathy — it is a wonderful and useful quality to have. It will serve you well both as a UX designer and a human being. When you find your heart breaking over how life is made difficult because UX design was not the top concern for a lot of the things around you, that’s how you know you’re strengthening your empathy muscle. Open your mind to the things we usually overlook or take for granted because it’s possible that no one else has noticed it before. Change comes with questioning the status quo and a lot of empathy.
Filipino Designers, listen up!
To wrap up the podcast, Mark urges Filipino designers to go back to the history of your design and learn how to translate it for other types of content and intent. Study how these designers worked on their craft and learn to translate it to a more modern setting. This is a good way to learn how to mold your work and certain design elements to solve different problems. As a UX designer, you are called to be create versatile work.
While you’re trying to learn more about your work and the output you want to create, you have to learn how to open that UX lens and practice it. Just like a muscle, working on it will strengthen it. It will do your job wonders.
“Once you open that UX lens, learn to practice it. Find that balance.”
