Ownership
I’ve previously highlighted the importance of a designer’s soft skills in posts such as Highlight your 20% and Designers vs. Design Professionals. In this post, I want to dive into ownership.
“What does ownership mean to you as a UXer?”
Close your eyes for a second, and think what your response is.
For most people, the answer is the obvious one: Getting the projects assigned to me done, in high quality, and on-time.
And if that’s your answer, congrats! That’s a good answer, but ownership goes beyond that.
It’s about owning everything that’s part of your role, and beyond.
- As a UX project assignee, own the success of it. If you are blocked, figure out who can help unblock it, drive it forward even if the blocker is a backend engineering issue or PM requirement ambiguity.
- As a design team member, you own the success of the team regardless of your seniority. Speak up when things are not working well and take actions for when you see something falling through cracks. Ownership is not just for your manager or team lead. It’s your job as well.
- As a cross-disciplinary team member, own the success of a feature. Speak up about design concern you have whether it is frontend related or not. Designers, engineers, tech writers, QAs, data scientists, and PMs — we’re all in this together to serve a common group of stakeholders — namely, our customers and our clients/employers. If you see a design that annoys you in the REST API, speak up! If you see persistent load time issue, speak up! It might not be your problem as a front end UXer but it’s a customer problem, speak up on their behalf and be their defender. If something negatively impacts your customers, make it your problem.
- As a recurring meeting owner, own the agenda and make sure you’re prepared for every meeting. Set the agenda for every meeting ahead of time, and let participants know what the desired outcomes are. Respect every one’s time because meetings are expensive.
- As a professional, reach out to help other be successful — whether they’re on your team or not. It’s not necessarily in your job description, but making those around you better ultimately makes the products and services we deliver better for our customers, and it’s good karma, too.
Being great designers today isn’t only about having a good body of work. It’s not just about showing your thoughtful storyboards, wireframe iterations, or delightful micro interactions. It’s about marrying these hard skills with your soft skills to be that complete package.
I’ll leave you with Jennifer Aldrich’s tweet (highlight’s mine)…
For more articles like this from me, check out /stevenmadesigns.
PS — I teach a 1-day UX Design bootcamp. I’d love it if you can help me spread the words: You can find my current schedule here. Thanks in advance!
