or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love UX
Sometime in 2017 I found myself feeling pointedly uncomfortable each time I looked for new work. I am an accomplished designer, animator and illustrator. I’ve been practicing my craft full-time for 17 years from small studios in London to massive advertising agencies in Chicago. I can recite Adobe key commands with far better accuracy than I can name state capitols. I have a few awards under my belt and have been published once or twice. I’ve even dabbled in typeface design (a humbling experience I may recount someday in another story). With this breadth of experience, why when I perused the job posts on AIGA, SolidGigs and Working Not Working, was I struck with a tightness in my chest and sweaty hands?
I was feeling squeamish when looking for new business opportunities because nearly every job posting used the UI/UX acronym. First, I had a bit of an issue calling myself a UI designer. I’m fortunate to do print, packaging and digital design and I have an equal passion for each. I prefer not to use labels but I suppose if I must I’ll stick with the more inclusive and traditional “graphic design.” But graphic design or visual design jobs, while not exactly going the way of the dodo, do seem to be akin to the tiger and orangutan (that was an endangered metaphor in case I’m being too obtuse).
When I graduated college in 2002, UI/UX wasn’t even a twinkle in the design field’s eye. Client website projects came in the form of Dreamweaver and Flash. It was almost entirely form over function. The internet was a wacky, wild west of aesthetics and experiences. In the mid-aughts through around 2014 I worked at a large ad agency in Chicago. Website projects in that era were often wireframed in Omnigraffle, designed in Photoshop and “cut up” and coded by front-end developers on my team. More recently when designing websites, if the client has had the budget I’ve been paired with a UX expert. Their work and insight has always been valuable and honestly quite fascinating. Heuristics, A/B testing, personas, key performance indicators, user flow charts, Boolean operations and accessibility are not a skill set that I’m well versed in. My brain is 110% visual. The fact that UI/UX — at least according to online job boards — were becoming inextricable was concerning and a bit perplexing. Was I the only designer not splitting my time equally between research and strategy based actions and the visual design of the thing itself?
I had a baseline to start from; UX was making me nervous. This knowledge was reassuring because now there was something to investigate. The first thing I did was read the seminal “Don’t Make Me Think” by Steve Krug. The book’s premise is that a good software program or web site should let users accomplish their intended tasks as easily and directly as possible. I’d be lying if I said that all of it was riveting, but once finished I felt I had a much better understanding of UX principles and how they relate to and integrate with the work I’ve spent the better part of 2 decades doing. Much of it was common sense and built upon the same design tenets I hold dear.
Confidence high, I began applying for those UI/UX jobs. I was surprised and disheartened to find that my application efforts were met with little to no response. If I did receive a reply it was always a thanks but no thanks scenario. Many of the jobs required a spec project to be completed, so I felt it was within reason to ask for more context as to their decision. Without exception, the companies cited policies that don’t allow for explanation or just simply said nothing. I know hiring managers are busy, but so are the designers giving of their time and energy to complete pro-bono projects. We can’t learn and succeed in the future if we aren’t aware of what we lacked or could have improved upon today. So there I was, still feeling uncertain of my place in the current world of design.
With no one willing to elaborate as to why I wasn’t being considered for the positions I was interested in, I did what we all do, I started making up stories and reasons in my head. And I wasn’t afraid to share them with my wife, family, friends or anyone that would listen.
Me: “Millennials shouldn’t be hiring, they wouldn’t know good design if it was sitting directly under their beloved avocado toast.”
Me: “If only I’d conducted one more focus group; said no one ever.”
Me: “Is it my seniority level? Do they assume I’ll be too expensive?”
Me: “Whatever. Every website and app is beginning to look the same anyway. Instead of a city block of storefronts we have the bland homogeneity of a suburban strip mall. I don’t want to design the online version of a TCBY. “
Me: “Well, f*ck them then!”
Haha, yeah, I was pissed (and not much fun at parties).
I’m not keen on staying in a pessimistic funk for too long (plus I like being invited to parties). I have an open mind and thick enough skin to not hold opinions or beliefs too tightly. I decided to examine the mystifying UX design practice further. I enrolled in the UX program with the Interaction Design Foundation for an in-depth, scholastic approach. IDF is an independent nonprofit established in 2002 with the lofty objective to “democratize learning by providing top-quality, online design courses at a fraction of the cost of traditional education.” Reviews I read as well as a sampling of the curriculum I could see before enrolling led me to believe that this would be an efficient and rewarding route towards gaining clarity of UX. It was a hail Mary pass and I was going for it.
IDF provides an online community as well as localized meet up groups across the globe, which I felt decreased some of the isolation of online learning. They employ a combination of video and written lessons which keep the information varied and engaging. I really appreciated that they had different course paths for different areas of interest. Because a UI Designer has a different reason for learning UX than someone wanting to go into UX for a career. The same is of course true for a Product Manager, Marketer or Front-End Developer. I’ll get into the value (as I see it) of this separation in just a little bit. I chose the Visual Designer path because it felt the most related to my past experience and my continued interest to work in both print and digital mediums.
What I learned was enlightening and enjoyable. The information was conveyed in clear and relatable ways. IDF spoke my language. They posted articles like “The Myths of Mobile Design and Why They Matter” on their blog. This aligned with my own beliefs that some of the UX dogma was really empirical evidence and ought to be more malleable to allow for new ways of thinking and creative design solutions. But the courses also showed me the errors in my thinking about UX as a creative limitation. UX is the graphic design grid writ large (side note: I freaking love using grids!). When employed correctly, UX enhances user satisfaction by improving the usability, accessibility and desirability provided in the interaction with a product.
You wouldn’t place a book’s table of contents at some random page in the center — that would create confusion and lead to less engagement — and you shouldn’t reinvent the wheel for purely personal, masturbatory creative reasons. Case in point, I can’t open my parent’s new VW car door. It involves having a key fob somewhere in the vicinity and then a sleight of hand which I invariably don’t possess. Was the traditional key so cumbersome? Key fob in your pocket is better than key in your hand, how? There was no need for a redesign. I’d be willing to bet there were no focus groups involved. No user tests showing a real disdain for keys and a love of hovering your hand at just the right distance above the handle. No, it was the opposite of user focused principles. This was a company or designer wanting to seem innovative and complicating the user experience with their results. IDF actually uses a lot of non-digital examples which helped clarify and make real the concepts being discussed. Employing a user centric design process is important in almost every industry and area of contemporary life.
Leading me back to why I think the separation of lessons tailored to different career paths is important. There are loads of people employed full time as UX designers, but there are far more people in need of a basic knowledge of UX principles. As more and more of our life is spent online or interacting with a digital interface of some kind we will all be required to carry out many of these kinds of functions in our jobs. In the future it won’t just be silicon valley types, developers and designers, but mechanics, hotel staff, government officials and everyone in between whose job prospects will be enhanced by an understanding of user centric processes. IDF has already seen the usefulness of different courses for different paths and I’m sure they’ll continue to adapt and add new and more varied paths with time.
I still believe that party comment about websites and apps all starting to look the same. The internet is chock full of boring typography, bright, utopian “start-up” color palettes, faceless character illustrations and stock photography. But this is not the fault of a UX approach to design. Uninspired designers, overly cautious clients, micro managing stake holders, CMS web templates and indistinguishable SaaS products are just a hand full of the contributing factors to a one size fits all, bland design scene. This will pass. In the grand scheme of things, interface design is very young. I am confident that designers will find their unique voice and push the medium — many already are. Like each progressive movement it takes incremental changes and those willing to take risks to move the needle forward.
It’s been 10 months since I enrolled with IDF. I’m still not employed as a UX designer and I’m o.k with that. Thanks to all that I have learned UX is no longer a black art cloaked in secrecy. I have a much deeper understanding of user centric design methods and I fully respect and appreciate their role in my work. I have the knowledge and ability to carry out testing, actualize the data I collect and utilize it to inform my design decisions. But I don’t actually want to do UX work full time or even split my creativity half time. It’s too divergent from the creative endeavors that light my fire.
What’s changed since those worrisome job searches in 2017 is a comfort and confidence to work on and seek out projects that are a good fit. I’m doing more consulting. I was hired as a UI Mentor with another online school and I get to use my experience, knowledge and passion to motivate the students to do the very best work they can. It is inspiring to see what students design and the ways that they employ user centric methods to creatively solve problems. Their enthusiasm is palpable and infectious when we have our video chats after they complete each task. I’m happy with where I am in my career and I no longer feel inadequate, uncomfortable or left behind.
