Last week I wrote a post for the Women in Tech Blog putting a call out to the women who have worked in and found a home in the tech industry. I pose the idea that it’s time for us, as experienced women in tech, to reach out to and educate the women around us that the tech sphere is a great one to be a part of. Advocating for Women in Tech is a post about spreading the word and enabling the women around us to get more involved. Give the post a read, and feel free to share your thoughts and ideas on the topic… I’m looking forward to hearing them!

Back in December, I wrote a post promoting a survey regarding UX & Business applications. Well now here we are about a month later, and the results are in! The main survey question was: What Are Ten Consumer Web UI Themes We’d Like to See in Business Applications? Ten suggestions were offered up including Google’s Instant Search, AJAX like page refereshes, Facebook’s Like button, Twitterish feeds, and Context-Sensitive Navigation. It looks like AJAX like page refreshes was the most popular option with Google Instant Search coming in at a close second with 14% of the vote. Check out the full results of the poll on the Software Advice Blog: Survey Results.

The author of the results would also LOVE to hear your feedback on both the survey and his analysis so be sure to leave some information for him. Again, thanks to everyone who was able to participate!

As designers, more over as individuals, we tend to look to fact in order to solve our problems, prove our points, etc. This is not a bad thing at all. I’m an advocate for discussions that are rooted in fact. However, there is a problem in our world of UX and design… that is a good amount of the time, facts or proof do not exist. A good deal of our profession and what we do in UX is based on observing user behaviors and inferring needs and goals based on this observation. There is usually a huge grey space inbetween, and, at times, we can be found doubting ourselves and our ideas, especially when there is a big ugly stakeholder in our way trying to “prove” us wrong.

I started to think about this more the other day as I was reading Todd Wilkens’ post on the Adaptive Path blog entitled Avoiding Half-baked Personas. There is one part of the piece that really stood out to me: Proto-personas the power of intuition based on data. It got me thinking not only about this step in the persona creation process, but how this metaphor can be applied to our field overall. That being that a great deal of what we do is all about using our intuition based on the data we observe or read.

Let’s face it you, as a UXer, probably do a ton of reading. In fact, you are reading this post right now in order to gain some different perspective on a topic in UX. We are a well informed profession for the most part. However, if we believe as individuals that at our core we, and thus our intuition, cannot be trusted, then we tend to falter when providing rational to stakeholders, developers, business people, etc.

So, how do we solve this problem? We need to begin to trust ourselves and really listen to our gut. Take a look around you at all you’ve learned and all you continue to learn. Everyday I learn something new about a job that I’ve been doing for 5+ years. This is important to realize because many professionals don’t take that chance to learn and iterate. We need to interalize our knowledge in order to become more confident in ourselves. Thereby really listening to our “guts” when it comes to experience decisions.

Thus, what I am telling you is to calm down when these fact based people begin to try and prove your design solution wrong. Because, quite frankly, there are not enough facts to prove one’s point by that route. We need to look at the most educated and knowledgable person in the room when it comes to users, and that is you! By trusting ourselves, and thus our “guts” we’ll get to see more of our solutions come to life, as well as feel better about ourselves as individuals, and have more confidence in ourselves. With each “trusting your intuition” success you have, you will become more and more confident in yourself as well as be able to bring more solutions to the people you serve… the users.

Please note: I also think that this post relates to more experienced designers (say… have worked on a number of projects & continued to evolve inside the profession experienced) as opposed to the “novice” designer mentioned in this study: The User-Centered Design Process: Novice Designers’ Use of Evidence in Designing from Data. Also, does anyone know what constitutes as novice in the study?

Several months ago I wrote a post explaining that I didn’t want to be an Interaction Designer forever (you can read Confession: I don’t want to be an Interaction Designer forever here). I’ve been doing even more reading, thinking, discussing on the topic, and have come up with additional thoughts and issues for us, as a UX community, to think about. What I’m going to write about today is the fact that one of the main issues that we see, but at times ignore, in this field is that most of us try to be jacks of all trades within UX. We try to be, and at times are successful at being, the IA and the IxD and the Content Strategist and the Visual Designer. Now you may be thinking, ‘duh Lis, that is how this field works’. But I would argue that this is an issue, a big issue, for several reasons.

First, by UXers trying to accomplish the entire suite of UX work themselves, we deter UX from maturing as a profession. What do I mean by this? I mean that if we continue to do this, UX as a profession, especially in organizations, cannot grow. Since one person, or several people, can handle a large amount of variation in their work, there is no reason to learn about and understand, as an outsider of UX, the different parts of the field. Why would I need to learn what content strategy is vs. interaction design vs. research when you do it all? Further more why would I budget for those activities when I’m not sure what they are and their benefit, and why would I hire someone for a specific role, even if we need an in house researcher, if I have no reason to believe that you can’t handle it all. Remember, UX is all about the Benjamins right?

Second, by us being jacks of all trades it can stump our own individual growth. How many of you out there know what your career path is? Ok you can do wireframes, interviews, task analysis, etc… but what next? UX management? But you don’t want to be a manager. What else besides management is next for a UXer? We can’t answer that question, because there are not career paths that have been established in our field. This is because the roles we play are so spread out and generalized that it is almost impossible to focus on one track… in fact there isn’t only one track. This leaves it up to the individual to determine how they want to grow, and who has the time to do that when there are specs to write?

Last, having one person cover all the roles in UX stops an individual from being truly satisfied and happy as a professional. There are so many things for us to do in this field. Some of which we enjoy doing (I love research, discovery, strategy, etc yay!) and some of which we don’t (I tend not to enjoy specing, wireframing, etc… boo!). Because of the issues I’ve mentioned above, though, companies aren’t going to hire different people for both roles, because I can do it all! (there are other reasons too I’m sure, I’m just focusing on this discussion). Therefore, I’m constantly having to do work I don’t enjoy in order to get the work I do enjoy. This leaves me, at times, with a feeling of dissatisfaction. By focusing in on the things I want to do, and by having a mature profession that allows me to do that, I can find more individual professional happiness.

Ok, so I’ve exposed the elephant in the room (yes I think that an IA is different than an IxD) and I’ve explained why I think we have an issue. So what do I propose we do about it? First, I think we need to try to stop being jacks of all trade. I saw this great article on Freelance Switch about 5 mistakes that will end your career. Take a look at #3. Being a jack of all trades makes us mediocre instead of awesome. If we stop allowing ourselves to be a do it all shop, people and companies will be forced to hire different people for different roles. Then, you can concentrate and focus on the UX stuff that you like, as opposed to having to do it all.

Second, we need to support and advocate for this different roles. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard UXers scoff at the term content strategy (isn’t that just IA??). Well there was a gig where I got to work with a truly gifted content strategist, and it was the best thing ever! They did all the work that I hated doing, and frankly the work that I wasn’t very good at. This made our solution ten times better than it would have been, and I was ten times more satisfied with my work. Advocate for a split in roles instead of being scared you’re going to lose your job… if you’re good, you won’t.

Lastly, I think we need to be more active in and provide more assistance to our education system. We have some phenomenal programs out there today that teach UX. But, they can be even better with our input and suggestions. Talk to the people that are part of these programs and share your ideas and thoughts about the work in this community. By doing so, they can continue to improve the course work that students receive and better prepare people for the UX working world. Thus, new UXers will already come in not expecting to be do-it-all shops and we can stop the bleeding at the core.

Thus, what do I see as the implication to the UX future if we are able to turn this ship? I think that UX will mature as a profession. We’ll start to see career paths and companies/organizations will better understand what we do, as well as their high need for our skills. You, as an individual, will also start to be more satisfied with you work. Not having to do the sitemap (but being involved in it) when you hate doing sitemaps will allow you to concentrate on how the user interacts through the site, the stuff you like to do. And finally UX will start to be respected as a field, and will not be seen as a bunch of people that have no idea what to call themselves. It’s time that we started to grow up and see that we are no longer advocating just for our users’ sake, but we are advocating for our place in the professional realm. We cannot do that until we know what to call ourselves and we won’t know what to call ourselves until we better define who we are and what we do as individuals in UX.

Recently I wrote a new piece of the Women In Tech Blog stating that it’s time for women in the tech sector to be proud to call themselves “women in tech”. By not doing so, we are hindering our ability to create a community that we can relate to, be a part of, and that can move our professions (numbers, salaries, etc) forward. Give Proud to be a Woman in Tech a read (even if you aren’t a woman in tech) and let me know what you think!

How many times have you seen your hard work go down the drain because it is “out of scope” or “not in budget”? How many times have you been shot down, disappointed, or unmotivated, because no matter how well designed and researched your solution is, it simply cannot be done? How can we, as UX Designers, stop this cycle from happening… more importantly how can we bring experience design into the conversation at a higher level so that experience decisions aren’t determined solely on project budget, but that they are bought into before the budget is even determined? How? Easy… learn where the money comes from.

The current state of most UX Designers, whether in-house, agency, or indie is that we simply are unaware of how money and budgeting works for the projects we are on as well as for the organizations that we work with and for. Instead of learning this we keep our eyes focused on the prize… which is the user experience. We find out all about the business need, user mental models, gaps, wants, etc… and use all of these factors to create the absolute best user experience possible for everyone. This is not necessarily wrong, afterall its what we’ve been trained to do, and it is a method that works.

The problem comes in when our solutions are out of scope, over budget, or just do not align with the sponsor’s end goals. Thus, our design solution, although well researched and informed, is not holistic. We are not fully aware, of how this solution will make the sponsor money, and how that money could lead to future innovations to our solution (and thus a better user experience). The business world is a cycle of earning money and spending money. Our solutions earn the business money, shouldn’t we also be aware of how that money is spent?

So, how do we solve this problem… how do we close this gap so that we can ensure a holistic, bought into, researched and designed user experience solution. First, we need to be sponges. Yes, sponges. We need to look at the project around us and be observant to how the money is moving through the project. Who in the organization (in house, or client side) is funding this effort? What type of monetary measurements (10% more users, 15% higher conversion rates, etc) will make this project successful? What other types of success measures are there? How is the project manager estimating spending of the budget (20% design, 40% development, 40% business, etc)? How can we ensure that our solutions fit into that budget? By asking these base questions, YOU begin to form a model around how money is being earned and spent. The next step would be, if possible, to take these learnings to the next level. Take them out of the project realm and start to apply them to the business level. For example, begin finding answers to questions like: what group in the organization has the biggest design budget and why? How can I up the design budgets in other parts of the organization? What are there intentions for innovation and development this year? How does design fit into the overall budget for the organization? How much revenue do my solutions bring into the company? How much revenue and profit will be put towards the design budget? etc. These types of questions take a good relationship as well as time to answer, but it is possible to get these answers… I’ve been there, trust me.

Lastly, if we learn about the money, design now becomes part of the business as opposed to just another resource on a project. As I mentioned previously, our solutions directly effect revenue and profit, therefore, effecting budgeting and future enhancements and innovations. By learning about and inserting ourselves into conversations about money we can begin to counter the “that’s not in the budget” comments with conversations like these:

PM: “That’s not in scope”
UXD: “How much of the budget will this solution take up?”
PM: “10% of the budget.”
UXD: “This solution will bring us in 5% more revenue then the original solution. Does that change the budget?”
PM: “Good point, let’s go talk to the sponsor.”

That, dear UXers, is a productive conversation. As opposed to preaching what’s best for the user (which we should always do) and relying on people’s good will and conscience to accept our decisions we have now inserted ourselves into the business side of things. The conversation can and should be taken to an even higher level. Sponsors with money to spend on innovation start looking to and need UXers to spend their money wisely. They want to get the most bang for their buck and that means getting more revenue, which can only happen with better design. Thus the solutions need to provide the best experience for the user… which is where you come in.

So, learn about the money. I know it’s scary, seems like you’re selling out, and seems like a job for someone else, but in order to advance the UX profession we as a group need to start integrating experience design into the business side of things. A coach cannot be a head coach for a professional football team if they are only aware of the game logistics. They need to understand offense, defense, recruiting, player management, funding, spending… all facets of the business and sport. That is how coaches integrate themselves into the football business. We need to learn about the money in order to become the “head coaches” of experience design for the organizations we serve. We need to be holistic and understand the root that all businesses are based off of… the cash.