Spread the Love: Great UX Involves Everyone
I have news for you, designers. You are not the only person designing in your organization. You’re not even the only designer on your own team. Great experiences don’t arise from a specific role or team within a company. Instead, they are built by a concerted effort across every discipline, from people who care about their craft, their users, and the impact their work makes. Great design comes from engineers, from project managers, from product leads. It comes from marketing and sales, engineering and human resources, operations and legal. And yes, it also comes from you.
Anyone who influences what the design becomes is the designer. This includes developers, PMs, even corporate legal. All are the designers.
Design, as they say, is in the details. And everyone has a hand in those. Great design performs quickly and with few bugs. Great design is well-written and concise. Great design gives value to users and improves business results. Great design is sustainable, ethical, and legal. Great design can’t be achieved through a single designer’s sheer will. Accidental design can be okay. Good design is easy. But great design? That takes everyone.
You might think this is terrible news. Everyone is sharing your prestigious title and hard work! But I urge you to let it soak in. Your team just grew substantially. Instead of everything experience-related falling squarely on your shoulders, your teammates can help you carry some of that burden. Instead of having to consider how every decision will impact users, everyone shares the responsibility. And instead of having to fine-tune every single touchpoint yourself, you can rely on your team to carry the user to their goal.
I, for one, would like to welcome our new design teammates.
Originally published at uxcellence.com on March 31, 2017.
