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Sep
16
You Are NOT a User Experience Designer
There is a fundamental misunderstanding amongst designers when they enthusiastically tell you that they're a User Experience designer.
When I used to train for motor racing, I’d always exercise and practice as if I was a sprinter. Being a sprinter requires you to be incredibly fit, fast and explosive. Every morning at 6am I’d get up to meet my trainer and start the process of weight lifting, running with parachutes, the whole deal. It was fun and I got fit, I got strong and I got fast.
Not once did I compete in an event. Not once did I call myself a sprinter. I merely tried to be a sprinter but training like one did not make me one.
Recently I traveled to New York to attend a WordCamp conference, and being a passionate designer I stuck to the design track. Almost every talk had an element of user experience design in it so I was intrigued to hear what the pro’s had to share.
During each talk I made a point during the Q&A’s to ask if the speaker had in fact done user testing and the answer I got from everyone was… “No.”
These days, it’s difficult to find a designer who doesn’t have the words “User Experience” in their title. They’re on Dribbble, they’re on Twitter, they’re at talks, they’re everywhere and yet in 10 years I have only met three people who I actually consider to be genuine UX designers. They are Jeffrey Zeldman, Dana Chisnell and Rian van der Merwe.
Just the other day I was in a presentation where three designers in the room described themselves as User Experience Designers and not one has done a single UX experiment.
There is such a massive difference between creating interfaces which look beautiful, and creating interfaces which your target market can/will actually use. The former involves pushing pixels requiring little experience, whereas the latter involves a deep understanding of what will and won’t work based on research, testing and data.
Being proficient in Photoshop / Sketch / HTML & CSS enables you to practice interface design but that won’t make you a better experience designer. Until you have observed someone (in silence) using the product you’ve created, you could not possibly understand how mind altering it is to see your work torn apart.
Obox knows this because Marc and I have been there. We commissioned Flow Interactive in Cape Town to test the purchase flow of our old site which involved us sitting behind one way glass while we watched five different people interact with our site. I will never forget the nerves and the anticipation right before the first person typed in our URL and pressed “Login.”
We wondered why she pressed Login, when in fact she had never visited our site before. Her response? “I’m registered on WordPress so I need to login first.” That would’ve been awesome if our site was WordPress.com, however our site was Oboxthemes.com. By the end of the day, we had made over 1,000 (yes one thousand) notes and observations from just 5 test subjects. Our minds had officially be blown wide open.
So can you just imagine the immense frustration we experience when we sit in the room with people who claim to do something they have no idea about? If you call yourself a User Experience designer you are making claims much larger than you think.
Please, before you show off your ability in understanding what your users want – organise a test, sit quietly, observe and be ready to have your mind blown. I promise you that once the day is over you’ll have a new appreciation of what it means to genuinely be a User Experience designer.
Here is a follow up post for those who want to learn more about user testing, in our opinion the most important part of UX design: The Do’s and Dont’s of User Experience Testing
I agree that user testing is an important part of UX design. However the competencies within UX are very broad. To assume a single person can be proficient in user research, analytics, content strategy, information architecture, interaction design, visual design and front end development is akin to finding a unicorn – it’s not going to happen. So at the same time, not being allowed to say you are a UX designer because you don’t do user testing is a bit unfair.
Of course if a UX team do not including user testing in their process then they are a design team. In saying that, it’s not all that bad because a good designer can get it a lot closer to being “right” first time than a bad designer. In my books a visual designer that makes prototypes is a UX designer and so is any combination of the competencies of UX that also touches on design.
I’ve done Flow’s UX course and I’m trying to get buy-in for UX in our agency and our clients, but it’s very, very difficult to get people to invest in the user testing part. In the Ecommerce space it can be argued it’s better to launch an MVP and get data from real customers than getting people to test on a wireframe prototype thing.
With that said, and as you pointed out, no amount of data can argue against seeing a real person struggling to do something on your website. So I’m all for the testing part – at very least the “Mum Test” as Dan Pinch likes to call it.
Also best practice is a great thing if you want to get educated, but in general they are a load of rubbish. Organisations need to be testing with their own customers, not a random sample from the USA or Europe: why big corporates would value a random sample over asking their Facebook fans is beyond me.
Good work on the provocative title, it’s god “buffer bookmark” written all over it :)
That’s for the comprehensive thoughts Nick.
No one person can be the all singing all dancing UX designer however that is exactly what people tell me when I ask what they do it upsets me.
It is more realistic to say you’re part of a UX team in which your responsibility is to design the interface.
Great post. Always good to hear from satisfied customers :-)
I absolutely agree that you shouldn’t call yourself a UX designer if you don’t regularly speak to customers. If you do UX properly, the team maintains a deep understanding of the customer throughout the design and build process. It means you do ethnographic research, usability testing, call centre monitoring, monitor analytics – anything you can to understand customers’ behaviour, motivations and needs.
Those ‘unicorns’ do exist, but they are very hard to find. It’s much easier to just to make sure every member of the team, no matter what their skills, have some interaction with end users on a regular basis. The easiest way to do this is through usability testing in a good lab.
Like Jared Spool says: “There is a direct correlation between the number of hours each team member is exposed directly to real users and the improvements we see in the designs. It’s the closest thing we’ve found to a silver bullet.”
One last thing about that title… it was going to be “Dear designers, I’m angry” but by the time I had finished the post I was a lot calmer.
I’ve been saddened at the disappearance of the word interaction designer and even web designer and it being replaced by UX (even if Jesse James Garrett says that’s how it’s supposed to be).
If you’re an IXD or a web designer you don’t have to have done usability testing (though you should be aware of what you’re not doing). Similarly, there are words like content strategists and information architects for the people with particular skills in that area.
I’d also say these days that there’s no excuse not to get some testing, even if it’s a few people with remote testing or guerilla testing just using quicktime to record the screen. You don’t need Morae or access to the perfect customer segment to do some useful testing!
I think “UX” is more about methodology designers are using in their day-to-day work but not about techniques. It’s not about how you designing, but how you make decisions in order to achieve goals.
User testing is just one method of data driven approach and, in my opinion, not the best one. If you run a user testing, it doesn’t mean anything, because it’s just data gathering. Then you’ll need to analyse this data and make a decision based on it. At this point a) you should be absolutely convinced that you can rely on the data you have gotten b) you need to map all your decision to the business objectives. That’s why I think AB and Multivariate testing in combination with segmentation and behavioural targeting are much more powerful techniques nowadays, because they remove that gap between your focus group and your real customers.
Generally, this article looks like generalised claim for me. If you can understand your target audience and efficiently use this knowledge to satisfy your business goals, you can call yourself “UX Designer” no matter which techniques / tools you are using.
Hi Artem
Your comment is much appreciated.
“If you can understand your target audience and efficiently use this knowledge to satisfy your business goals, you can call yourself “UX Designer” no matter which techniques / tools you are using.”
I agree wholeheartedly with this point and it was the premise of why I wrote this article. I have recently come across too many designers who’s only form of reference are some articles on the internet and based on that they self-declare themselves as UX designers yet the only experience they have is the photoshop/design part.
So, if there’s a UX Designer out there who actually DOES do user testing (like me), how would we differentiate ourselves?
Good observation. It needed to be said.
Wow… I am dismayed to hear about this. There are heaps who research and test, so much so its hard to find any with half decent ui design skills needed for concept testing.
While I agree there can be an over representation of presenters that don’t walk the talk at some conferences, there are plenty that do. Plently.
The real problems for funding research and testing and locating the right users often require designers to make guesses that then get prototypes in the wild. This is terrifying for a designer but still just as valid and very much inline with startup activities. A team focus on learning and iterating is just as successful as the insight/testing driven approach.
Conference presentations are great at sharing a tidy, successful approach but the questions to ask them is how long, what and how many different approaches were tried; and how many battles were fought and won/list and how many compromises had to be made.
UX is really a shared frame if mind, and everyone’s responsibility. The skills making it up are so varied and the lines keep blurring.
The titles we use are a convenient label but do little to explain any designers particular abilities – that is better described by the company or industry they work in.
The title is misleading and there are so many things I disagree with …
Nick Soper is right. UX designers are T-Shaped people (see articles on this topic).
I think you didn’t understand UX design correctly. UX designers are not multi functional web designer or user testers. And UX design process is not just user testing. And UX design does not end with HTML/CSS.
UX design starts with research and ends with test. I’m UX designer and I don’t write a single line of code (But I was a developer and designer). I suggest you to read ‘Killer UX design’ book. You will understand UX in action.
Hey Davood
Thanks for the comment.
The very fact that it is multi-disciplinary is the reason I get upset when a UI designer says they’re a UX designer. The point is that the title “UX Designer” is self-assigned way too easily.
We do plenty of research, content strategy, info architecture, design and testing before we release a product. Our main site, Oboxthemes.com was over a years worth of development. Also having heavily invested in hiring genuine UX professionals we have been more than exposed to “UX in action.” We’ve been part of it.
Totally agree with Nick, UX is a wide field with many disciplines and methods
Couldn’t agree more. For me, UX design is more science than art. And scientists test their ideas. You obsess over the response to design.
“Our minds had officially be blown wide open.”
Indeed. Back in the day (2007/8) I was working in a team as junior designer and we asked some guys from another team to perform a task in which he needs to notice a particular link > Fill in a form > click on big green button we added at the end of the form saying “submit”. There was another, same button at the top right corner of the form, not highlighted, barely noticeable.
In order to submit the form, he clicked on the second button and not the big green button at the end of the form. We were shocked!
After the task was completed, we asked him “why didn’t you click the submit button at the bottom?” guess what? He looked at the screen again and it was at that time he even noticed the button! His response was “Oh yes, I could have clicked that button too. But I didn’t notice it.”
As a designer, we make many assumption about a particular thing but nothing teaches us more than doing a real user test.
I think that the main problem now days is that companies are looking for someone to do both, the graphics part and the UX. There are many articles on that subject but as a UX designer (with user testing etc.) I am often asked if I can do the graphics too.
I see it especially in Startups where everybody take on many roles to save budgets and they can’t/prefer not to hire 2 different persons.
I usually tell: I do UX but if it is very very necessary I can do UI.
I love the research, the interaction with users, and the insights I get, but unfortunately it is hard to find a place where you can do only UX.
[…] You Are NOT a User Experience Designer: David Perel, co-founder of Obox themes, argues that you can’t call yourself a UX designer if you’ve never conducted a UX experiment. Several of his readers disagree. Good discussion in the comments. […]
I agree with the earlier comments describing the t-shaped designer and the need to identify a discrete discipline under the umbrella of UX. I am an Interaction Designer by primary purpose, but I do several tasks that fall under the umbrella – IA, Interaction Design, Motion Design, Visual Design via Creative Direction, Front-end Dev, and User Research. I guess that would qualify me as one of the “unicorns,” but I prefer to think of it as being a Designer who knows his medium.
Interestingly enough, I was having this conversation at work a few weeks back. When I am speaking to people in the design field, I say “I’m an Interaction Designer.” I shouldn’t have to do more than that with those people. When I speak to people not in the field of design, “UX designer” as the title should suffice. If they’re interested, I’ll have the conversation outlining the different disciplines within. For me, it’s about knowing the audience and adjusting what I say to be understandable – really, using the UX process on the conversation to maximize understanding :)
I always like this quote “A user interface is like a joke. If you have to explain it, it’s not that good.”.
The main goal of UX is to validate or improve using a factual approach.
UX it is not only user testing.
It is not fair to drive the Title UX with the use or not of a single tool.
There are a wide range of tools or techniques on UX not always needs all.
The proper selection and execution of these techniques will be driven a UX Designer.
Many of the problems uncovered by a usability test should never have occurred in the first place – they should’ve been prevented by the UX Designers knowledge of basic usability rules.
If you’ve only met three UX designers who leverage research you need to get out more.
Well intentioned but off base article. UX does not simply equal user testing + Web design. Even Jeff Zeldman calls himself a Web designer not a UXer. Among the key parts of the practice missing are information architecture, interaction design, and content strategy. To say you’ve only met 3 legit UXers means: please get more tapped into the wider UX community so you can be a better-informed advocate!
[…] terms. Although designers were prototyping and sketching more, people tended to be a little more relaxed when it came to performing usability studies. It’s still a good thing though: businesses are beginning to ask how to solve their customers […]
[…] terms. Although designers were prototyping and sketching more, people tended to be a little more relaxed when it came to performing usability studies. It’s still a good thing though: businesses are beginning to ask how to solve their customers […]
[…] terms. Although designers were prototyping and sketching more, people tended to be a little more relaxed when it came to performing usability studies. It’s still a good thing though: businesses are beginning to ask how to solve their customers […]
I am so happy to have read this. It shouldn’t be ignored. I started my UX career as a researcher, and have transitioned to leading a lean UX team where while some are research leads, the IAs and visual designers all partake heavily in the research process. So many efficiencies achieved while the quality of IA and visual designs only increase in effectiveness. Study lean and you will learn the value of research and making decisions based on data (whether qualitative or quantitative). If there is already documented external or internal UX research, reuse! No need to test what has already been proven. Make educated decisions, and test as often as you can. Writing this off as an irrelevant topic will prevent UX from rising to the executive suite. While it is not as common to study internal processes, study Lean principles, and it is clear that making decisions based on information is required in order to understand and to create experiences that our users want, instead of what we THINK our users want. Your post was well-writtedn and more people should focus-in on this topic, and I thank you for writing this.
-A