4 ms·

As a long-time designer, this is one of my main beefs with the rise of UX Design as term for design leadership (that's compared to UX positions that include "re

As a long-time designer, this is one of my main beefs with the rise of UX Design as term for design leadership (that's compared to UX positions that include "research" in their role, for example, and are usually great contributors to a project). When you design a digital product, it's a given that the redesign should perform better in real life situations compared to the current version. Sometimes, the current version is a digital product as well, but sometimes it's forms, a pen, and an efficient clerk. These are the benchmarks from which the product should deliver clear improvements. Most quote-unquote UX designers of the last decade, including many authors on uxdesign.cc, have a career arc that's an ignorant rediscovery of an existing discipline (interface/product design), which they keep not learning because they must appear above the existing skills and workers to keep the illusion going in the face of their managers and LinkedIn audience. (If you think I'm equating lots of UX designers to middle-managers who sometimes ship a wireframe, you're reading me right!)

nkrisc 3y ago
With 12 years experience as a UX designer, I’ve found that the best UX designers I’ve worked with usually had backgrounds and careers from a non-UX field before UX. Often academic backgrounds, such as anthropology, for example, and had at least some graduate degree. They understood actual primary research and applied it to their design process, and the results spoke for themselves. Once UX became something you could enter from undergraduate studies (guilty as charged), or no degree at all, you end up with a lot of UX designers who lack those skills. And unless you are lucky enough to work with people who have those skills (as I was) or are a particularly motivated autodidact, you end up with articles like this.

nkrisc 3y ago

With 12 years experience as a UX designer, I’ve found that the best UX designers I’ve worked with usually had backgrounds and careers from a non-UX field before UX. Often academic backgrounds, such as anthropology, for example, and had at least some graduate degree. They understood actual primary research and applied it to their design process, and the results spoke for themselves. Once UX became something you could enter from undergraduate studies (guilty as charged), or no degree at all, you end up with a lot of UX designers who lack those skills. And unless you are lucky enough to work with people who have those skills (as I was) or are a particularly motivated autodidact, you end up with articles like this.