UX

Of late I have encountered a number of (click bait?) articles lamenting the state of UX. They either talk about how no one takes it seriously anymore, or that now that “everyone is a designer” the practice is suffering or that with the rise of design systems, and the safety nets that comes with them, we no longer put as much rigor into UX that we once did. 

I always find it interesting that these authors do two things. First they time the beginning of UX to date when they began to practice UX—in most of these cases that’s more than a decade after UX was first introduced by Don Norman at Apple in 1993. Second, their narratives reads like a chapter from Joseph Campbell’s The Hero's Journey but in this case they are title character; The lone UX Designer, champion, hero and provocateur, on a quest for the unachievable.

In reality, User Experience requires systemic approach undertaken by cross disciplinary teams (often over the course of years) to balance their customer’s needs with those of the business and realities of the available technologies.

When Don introduced the concept of User Experience he saw his role as an architect, that is a coordinating and aligning functional teams from across the various divisions of Apple around a common purpose; the user’s experience as an Apple customer. Beginning with the point of sale, on to packaging, unboxing, documentation, through first use, adoption and the learning curve that comes with extended use, on to the inevitable engagement with customer support, installing upgrades, and eventually the trade-in for the newer model, the original vision of User Experience was never meant to be the responsibility of a single discipline, let alone a single person. UX was always a team sport.

Digging into the overall customer lifecycle, while the point of sale and unboxing needed to be magical, that part of their experience faded quickly once the customer started using the device. Apple’s customers spent the majority of their time using the product. The feel of the keyboard and the mouse—or track pad, and resolution, color balance, and luminosity of screen were important foundations to the experience but the major determinant in their experience was the software and how it responded to their actions. Whether it was the OS or the software products people installed on their computers, their primary experience was driven by the interface of the software. To ensure a positive user experience much of the focus was then placed the functionality and design of the software interface, how it felt, how it behaved, the unspoken dialog that took place between the human and device. The other primary point of contact was with customer support, which was also a key focus in the early days of UX and continues to be a core differentiation for the Apple’s products.

In the early days of UX, gaining support from the organization took proof that such approach would result in better products, given customers’ experience was primarily via the interface, the initial UX work typically fell on the shoulder of the designers. In some organizations the designers were able to engage engineers, customer support, and product managers to participate in gathering customer insights but it was not an easy sell.

Then over time, as businesses began to learn the financial benefits of investing in their UX, they began building out research capabilities, optimizing their platforms both for performance and stability as well as extensibility, accessibility, and personalization. These companies began to really focus on how to engage with their customers, to learn their needs and to build better solutions. However, in many cases as the organization evolved and embraced UX, the unfortunate truth is that the designers who had been the champions were not interested or more often not capable of having objective business discussions so they were never invited to the big table.

To have a successful user experience for a digital product requires multiple disciplines to work in unison; Engineering, software architecture, data science, front end development, accessibility, content design, marketing, and the interaction design all need to work together to make a positive experience for the user. Designers who can engage with their peers in leadership joined the big table and provided clarity and helped set the priorities for their organizations, bringing other functional areas along with them.

As always, please feel free to share your thoughts.

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