Undesign Comics: A Candid Rebellion
Undesign Comics is a comic series on Instagram (@undesigncomics). Our team consists of UX designers, a UX researcher, and a writer. Our comics are born out of:
- Our reflections on our UX practices,
- Us embracing the diverse group of designers in the UX community, and
- An opportunity to unwind, laugh, and learn.
“Here’s my opinion of your opinion…”
Social platforms like Twitter and Medium are great spaces for UX professionals to showcase truly remarkable ideas and practices. We highly value these expert designers for everything we learn from their craft and experiences. Designers like Daniel Burka, Julie Zhuo, and Jared Spool feel like common household names.
Amidst all this admiration, we find tweets that can easily rile up a smaller group of loud UXers. The recent Slack rebrand is a good example. The only spark needed at that point was a popular designer questioning the rebrand. The swans, swastikas, and human anatomy references were quick to follow.
Next, the rebrand was trending on Twitter for all the wrong reasons. Finally, a Buzzfeed article!
At times, Medium is no different — idea posts and contradiction posts are more common than we would have liked. For a post that praises design thinking, we find the next recommended read to be a dismissive post about design thinking. A search about conducting research with live users can result in posts about the value of talking to users and about how to design without talking to your users.
We see two big challenges here:
1. Novice designers like us could end up limiting our scope of empathy just to end-users. This will lead to ignoring the necessary empathy required amongst the UX community itself!
2. Decision-makers both in the UX space and outside it can possibly discount the value of the design practice.
Why undesign?
Coming from different professional backgrounds, all four of us have spent years studying and practicing the UX craft. In this process, we have discovered meaningful, engaging, and fun ways to find solutions to tough problems. However, with a frequent weapons-out approach to defending ideas and practices, it feels like design and fun have never walked into a bar!
Undesign Comics is born out of an almost child-like lens of everything associated with the term ‘design’ — colors, art, craft, fun, exploration, fun again, shiny, fancy, messy, fun yet again!
Undesign Comics is also an active result of our reflections as UX professionals. As we are learning and practicing the craft, many of our comics are a result of our current deficiencies. With a comical take, we are also trying to have uncomfortable conversations with a required light-heartedness.
Almost as important, Undesign Comics is a side-project bringing together varied experiences — a former engineer, and a former architect, a UX researcher all their life, and a writer all their life. For all our frustrations with a small slice of the UX community pie, it was easy for us to land on the idea of a comic series.
Up next
Our current set of comics are based on certain themes. The next set of posts on this publication will be discussing those themes. For instance:
- Our reflections on UX education and practice
- The impact of industry buzzwords and their impact
- Our experiences with hiring in UX teams
We have a proposal submitted to SXSW 2020 to engage with a broader audience and bring to light these important conversations in the UX space. Vote for us:
For ideas, collaborations, and critique
While we are committed, we are limited by our experiences. All ideas and opportunities for collaboration are welcome. Use your choice of channel for communicating with us:
- @undesigncomics on Instagram
- undesignsorg@gmail.com
- Talk to us on any or all posts in this publication
Our team
Apurva Gupta is a UX researcher for AWS at Amazon. Sanchit Soni is a UX designer at 8x8. Rishabh Bhardwaj is a UX designer at Kohl’s. Chetan Bhatia is a writer at Clover Network, Inc.
