Bringing Your Perspective to UX Work
What does my personal experience have to do with UX design?
As User Experience professionals (UXers), we must understand the problems and realities of the people for whom we are designing. This is why UX literature is constantly encouraging designers to learn how to empathize and put biases and assumptions aside in order to get into the shoes of our audiences. In fact, many empathy methods and techniques have proven to be very helpful in understanding and building relationships with users.
But is there truly no place for designers to look through the lens of our own experiences in order to connect with and impact the outcome of our designs?
My own perspective as a parent and child-experience designer has taught me that for kids everything is a learning opportunity, that the feeling of learning is the best motivator, and that co-creating with kids is essential to figure out how to translate these and other insights to practice. This perspective has helped me to be a more compassionate, curious, and understanding designer. Moreover, my inner voice has become my quality assurance compass, always asking the same question: “Would you give this product, game or app to your children?”
Just as my experience has led me to be a better designer, each designer brings with them unique experiences that also strengthen their design skills.
Diverse Perspectives in Design — Interviews with Experts
I have found that I am not alone in allowing my own experiences and perspective to color my professional work. In fact, UX is a well-established, appealing and expanding field that attracts talented people from a variety of diverse backgrounds. What’s unique about this field is that no two UXers have gone through the same career path! It’s common to find a former teacher and former sales representative sitting at the same design table, collaborating on tasks and brainstorming ideas together. It’s no wonder that in “Understanding the Role of Designers’ Personal Experiences in Interaction Design Practice”, Zhang & Wakkary explain that “there is a need to explicitly recognize the legitimacy of using designers’ personal experiences in design practice.”
With this in mind, I spoke to some UX colleagues and asked them to share their viewpoints regarding the importance of diversity in UX and design. Here are three unique perspectives from designers who describe how their personal and professional experiences influence their work.
Dr. Colleen Russo Johnson, Child Development PhD and UX Researcher
When asked about how her personal perspective has helped shape her designs, Dr. Johnson explains the importance of diverse research teams and understanding your target audience:
“The UX researcher absolutely brings a lens to their work, and this highlights why having a diverse UX research team — in as many ways as possible! — is so important. It’s also why I think the intersectionality of subject expertise and UX research is so helpful.”
Colleen shares how, for example, her PhD training in Child Development has made her a successful researcher in general, and at the same time gave her deep subject knowledge expertise in children, education, and development:
“When I approach UX research (UXR) or play testing, I absolutely am applying my child development lens to my work. And in doing so, I’m far more efficient and effective in my role, particularly when it comes to translating findings into actionable insights.”
I was most impressed by the way Colleen applies her academic research skills and training to her entrepreneurial initiatives. For example, she co-founded OK Play, an app that bridges the gap between real and digital playtime and recipient of the 2022 Kidscreen Award. In this video, Colleen explains that the app allows parents and kids to play together and adds some extra laughs to their day: “You can think of it as a launchpad for spending quality time together, which we know from decades of research is critical for emotional development.”
Colleen is passionate about figuring out how to use media and technology to enhance the lives of families everywhere and OK Play is a great example of science put to practice. This is exactly why we need people like Colleen in EdTech!
☀️ Colleen’s top tips for UX professionals:
- Always stay flexible, and follow the user. It’s good to learn and apply various methodologies, and of course, follow best practices. Just don’t become so rigid that you don’t innovate and follow your instincts. The point of UXR is to continually learn and allow what’s being tested to iterate. Every user is different, and every product is different. Don’t be afraid to think outside the box.
- Lead with empathy and genuine curiosity. Never judge. Connect with your users and their situations so you can truly understand them. It’s your job to represent their perspectives and their needs.
- Get to know the processes and roles of the teams you’re reporting insights back to–whether it’s creative, product, engineering, etc. If UX researchers don’t have an understanding and respect for their counterparts, then the UXR process will be far less effective. Collaboration is imperative.
- Spend time with your target audience. For the most part, being a parent enhances my understanding and empathy when doing research with kids — and, in particular, parents — though I’m continually careful to never let my sample size of two cloud my judgment or point of view! Being hands-on with dozens of kids is invaluable. If you’re in the kids’ space, the best thing you can do is spend time with kids.
Kristina Wang, Former Teacher, Senior Product Designer
When asked about how her professional experience as a teacher has helped shape her designs, Kristina focused on the importance of self-reflection, “soft” skills, and personal strengths:
“Obviously you need some technical skills to be a designer, but those can be taught; it’s harder to teach someone to become more collaborative or to develop empathy.”
Kristina emphasized how UX is one of those interesting fields that is constantly changing, and how we design our own educational process depending on the qualifications we want to achieve: “There is always some way in which our experience can help us on the way. ‘What’s your superpower?’ is something we talk about a lot in the teaching field, and especially about being able to apply that. UX is a field where different kinds of superpowers can be equally useful. The key is to understand how we can work together as a team and get to the endpoint of where we want to be.”
What stood out most about Kristina was her ability to transfer her teaching skills and knowledge to her design work. This is one of the higher-order executive functions that is so crucial for success in our rapidly changing environment. Her sensitivity to the user’s understanding and perception are obviously related to her teacher’s lens and allow her to create interactive and hands-on experiences that don’t leave anyone behind. “As a teacher, I would probably lose about half my students if I were to teach out of a textbook,” shares Kristina with a smile.
“I see the same thing apply to product design; it is really about being cognizant of ‘how well can my users understand this?’ and ‘how can I make sure that I am meeting them where they’re at rather than just lecturing to them?’”
☀️ Kristina’s top tips for UX professionals:
- Know your superpowers and spend time self-reflecting. Spend time on regular self-reflection. Knowing your superpowers can help you achieve your dream position or any other goal by clearly communicating your abilities to others. I personally miss working with students — the actual educational piece! — and so I look for places where I can fulfill my inner calling, utilize my skills and apply my values in a meaningful way.
- Be attentive to your users and open to improvising. Be cognizant of those using your products and their technological proficiencies and needs. As a product designer, you know what functionality needs to be performed and your job is to make sure that users won’t feel overwhelmed and lost. Plan ahead but be open to adapt as you go based on the feedback you get from the field. This way you’ll be able to create interactions that reach users at their level.
- Design for different levels. In product design, it’s easier to create one generic experience for everybody. But the truth is that it might miss the mark. The challenge is to create designs that really speak to different levels.
- Fall in love with complex problem-solving. Break complex concepts and problems down into digestible pieces. For example, in my workplace, several solutions are quite technical. It gives me joy to take complex parts of our platforms and make sure that our users understand them and can navigate through the process with confidence and ease.
- Look for ways to help. There are always opportunities for designers to use their personal skills to help others. When I was first starting out, I got a lot of help from other designers, and when someone reaches out to me now, I always try to share my two cents. Be open to asking for help. We are all students and teachers at the same time.
Kim Ducharme, Learning and Interactive Designer
When asked how her personal perspective has helped shape her design, Kim focused on the importance of teamwork, collaborative efforts, and creative problem-solving processes: “One of my specialties is helping people understand complex information. Back when I was with the public broadcasting station, WGBH, my team and I were creating interactive media as companion pieces to the TV programs. For the NOVA science program, for example, it was about using the affordances of the interactive medium to serve deeper understanding.”
“We were passionate about figuring out the right interactive learning experience for each topic and how to take complex material and make it digestible for science enthusiasts.”
Today, Kim works with learning scientists, instructional designers and UX designers at CAST. They pioneered the Universal Design for Learning (UDL) framework, which is about reducing the barriers to learning by anticipating and proactively designing for learner variability. Kim is committed to harnessing the power of design to tackle the educational challenges of our time. “What I love about my work,” says Kim, “is that I have a direct hand in helping to figure out how learning works. I am currently focused on how maker-centered learning functions and hope this work can make a huge impact on educators in classrooms, makerspaces, and Fab Labs around the world.” In this podcast episode, Kim defines edUX and shares her thoughts on where this domain is headed in the future.
When I spoke with Kim, I was most impressed by her curiosity and desire to constantly expand her toolbox: “I am a curious lifelong learner with a science background. I always want to understand the world around me and ask questions.” Kim is simultaneously a learning designer, researcher, and artist. Her creative, problem-solving way of thinking and hands-on approach are almost like painting. She takes a little bit from here, adds a little bit from there, and mixes it all together in one masterpiece. As Kim says, “this is the essence of the creative process, right?”
Kim encourages UX designers to use existing UX methods and techniques to help boost creativity and overcome “stuck” moments. This approach is extremely helpful, because it lets designers off the hook from reinventing the wheel. Knowing that we can feel confident in relying on methods established by others provides designers with a lot of space for learning and expanding.
☀️ Kim’s top tips for UX professionals:
- Work closely with each other’s expertise. It’s critical to work together as a team. We all wear a lot of hats, so collaborating is about acknowledging the areas of expertise within the room and working with them. I bring a certain understanding, but I also rely on others’ expertise, from learning sciences research and content expertise to coding.
- Use journey mapping. Journey mapping is my go-to tool these days because it allows me to really unpack any experience. For example, take a one-hour learning experience and ask: What is happening in the course of this hour, step by step? What are the associated materials and tools? These comprise your rows, or “swim lanes”, and you can add more lanes to unpack other dimensions of the experience. Emotions and engagement are key aspects of journey mapping. You can look at the highs and lows, then ask: What and where are the contributing barriers? What is their nature? What is the nature of things that are going well? And why are they going well? What are the strengths that you can capitalize on from a learner? Journey mapping is the ultimate exercise in being curious and deepening empathy. It’s amazing!
- Don’t get stuck creatively. People think that I’m very creative, but my secret is trusting in the process and relying on UX tools and methods. There are so many now and they have really come to the surface in such an accessible way. For example, in Figma or Miro there are templates available for every part of the collaborative design process. There are templates for journey mapping, brainstorming, and decision-making. Use the tools available to you. Don’t get stuck! Use them like a palette or a toolkit. Draw with them, as needed. UDL is all about understanding goals, then anticipating barriers and designing accordingly to reduce those barriers. So even in your design process, know your goals and what tools are going to help you achieve those goals, smooth the way, and reduce barriers.
Using Experience to Empower Design
Our duty as UX designers is to serve real people with our designs in the best way that we can. The common denominator underlying the answers of all the experts with whom I spoke is that personal perspectives can be used as a tool for empowering designs.
Our experiences are an important part of our toolbox. Like every tool, the result depends on how well it is mastered and applied. If used thoughtfully, bringing a personal lens to the design table can add a sometimes much-needed boost of empathy and creativity, and guide us toward the best possible design solution. Our skills and tools are our artistic palette. Let’s use them to draw!
I hope these stories will inspire you to find a way to use your personal or professional experience in your current design practice. As I see it, the highest achievement would be if designers could develop the ability to learn from (and with!) others, apply different perspectives when appropriate, and celebrate the use of diverse backgrounds in design.
The stage is yours now! What is your perspective? How does it shape you professionally? What can the UX community learn from YOUR perspective? Please share in the comments.
Polina Lulu specializes in children’s technology, learning, and play. She researches, writes, talks, and consults about integrating children’s voices and rights into design and creating products and games that help children thrive.
Want to discuss or need assistance with UX research, optimizing play experience, or including children in your research and design processes? Setup a virtual coffee or connect with Polina on LinkedIn.
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