Earlier this year, I attended Internet Week New York; an event centered around the world of technology and startups that helps to uncover and expose new thinking and trends in the industry. I was one of a handful of UX professionals that attended over the week, something that I think should change.

As UX designers, we are focused on our world. We come up with new ideas around the type of work we want to do, the type of companies we want to work with, and the type of products we want to work on. Many times this thinking points us in the direction of the explosive world of startups. This happens because in the world of startups we see the ability to break out of the political and corporate molds and really define the design process to be used as well as the product to be built. Finally we can use all the methodologies and techniques that we have been reading about and, even better, the products and websites are so cool!

However, we are not doing our best to insert ourselves into this world and thus aren’t seeing the benefits of working in it. At times, we are expecting startups to come to us, instead of us going to them. Afterall, these startups are the people that need our expertise right? Wrong. Startups and more flexible businesses aren’t sitting around waiting for UX knowledge to descend on them. Instead they are doing work, and a lot of it, which helps them to get their product ideas out the door and into the hands of users so that they can either exit (get acquired or IPO) or get more funding. Don’t get me wrong, they would love our help… who wouldn’t? But because we aren’t inserting ourselves into their ecosystem and learning the ins and outs of their world, we are too much of a risk to add to the team. We come in with all these ideas and methodologies that work, but don’t know how to cater them to this particular field, and thus it can take us alot of time to come up to speed. And, in the world of startups, this is precious time that they don’t always have.

Thus, if we want to be a part of this exciting environment, we need to begin to learn about and become a a part of the culture. Part of this is attending events like Internet Week (or whatever local entrepreneurial events are available) and observing and asking questions. Also, take the time to reach out to people in the startup realm and interview them about what being in a startup means, really means. What are their goals, needs, tasks (sound familiar. Personas anyone), and then think about how what you do or want to do may or may not fit in with these needs goals and talks, or work to enhance them.

Only by becoming aware of this culture can UX really be helpful and succeed within it. Otherwise we are just applying apple thinking to an orange environment. By coming up to speed with technology, product and business work in the startup world, and understanding how you can affect that world, only then can you begin to join it and be successful in it.

This past week I wrote a post for the Women In Technology blog. In it, I talk about how the examples of women in technology that many of us use are of very established and successful women. However, that lifestyle is not for everyone, and being a woman in tech doesn’t mean that you have to be exceptional. Instead it means that every woman should be what she wants to be, and use the tech profession to forward her career in whatever ways are comfortable for her. For more, give You Don’t Have to Be Extraordinary a read… and let me know what you think!

As many of your know, I love sports. I love playing sports, I love watching sports, and I am a huge college basketball fan (Go Tarheels! Sorry Dukies, but well you know). I have participated in some form of organized team sports since I was in elementary school, and continue to do so to this day. In fact, it’s probably what keeps me sane. Because of this, I can’t help but associate lessons learned from the field with how to become a better UX professional (I also can’t ignore this because the idea came to me from a desk neighbor at one of my favorite clients). Thus, I wanted to share with you some of those lessons from the field, and how they have made me a better UX Designer. So, our first lesson from the field: success is all about strategy.

In your current project, what is your strategy for success? Has your team sat down and agreed on what success will look like and how it’s defined? From that has your team talked about the strategy for getting the project over the finish line… and I mean talked about it as a team. Sure maybe your design team has a strategy, and the development team has their strategy, but what about the team as a whole…. what is that strategy?

Team strategy and consensus is extremely important for project and product success. Without having a shared end goal, and then a road map for getting to that goal, everyone will begin to chase their own ambitions and goals. This, in turn pulls the product apart at the seam, and real progress and success never sees the light of day. Do you think that an NFL team goes out there every week without talking about how they are going to win? How could a team of more than 22 active players win unless they all have the same idea of success, it just wouldn’t make sense.

So, in order to avoid the problems of team distrust, discontent, and lack of success, you gotta have a game plan. Sit down with your team and make it happen. Talk about what success is, how the team will get there, and what part you can play in that strategy.

By doing this, you get everyone on the same page. Tech, marketing, business, project and account management, are all heading in the same direction. Sure everyone has their own individual talents and value adds, the same as a quarterback has a different set of skills than a linebacker, but being able to combine those talents in a productive and successful way is what being a team is all about.

I have a confession to make, I’m an observer. Much like the majority of us in this field, I observe others’ behaviors, and notice patterns that creep up over time. One of the recent patterns that I have noticed is the lack of job satisfaction in the UX field specifically with people that are new and have finally landed their first “real” UX job (I’ve assumed this to mean that they have a title like UX Designer, Information Architect, Interaction Designer, etc). Over and over again I have seen people excited to be in UX, and then deflated at the reality of what this means in their actual roles. These professionals are expecting to jump into a role where they are designing solutions based on the user research that they conduct, and the analysis that comes out of that user research (i.e. persona creation, scenario creation, etc). However, more often than not, the role they find themselves in is less about observing behavior, doing research, analyzing research and designing based off what we find out about the user, and more about designing something really quickly, throwing that into a wireframe, all without user input, so that we can get something over to the client.

From this huge letdown, comes an immense amount of disheartenment and confusion. People are left feeling unsure if UX is really for them. They begin to wonder things like ‘when do we get to do design studio?’, ‘when do we set up user interviews?’, ‘will we ever test this with users?’, ‘how about bodystorming, when do we get to do that?’, and… well you get the point. Basically they want to know when they get to do all the cool stuff that everyone is always writing and talking about. Honestly, this is not too far off from what some of us long time UXers think about in our own roles. And the problem, with never being able to actually do the fun UX stuff is that, well, nobody wants to be in UX anymore. The profession is not a reflection of the education around it, and becomes a sort of farce. People are left out in the cold wondering which way to turn, and our users receive less and less of the representation than they deserve.

How do we bring the gap between people’s expectations of becoming UXers and the real world implementation of the profession? I’m going to start by breaking down where these expectations come from. I think there are three distinct sources. First, the education that people receive both in a formal setting as well as a informal setting. Second, their perceptions of that education. Third, the way that the implementation of UX work is advertised.

Thus, one thing we could do is change the education in the UX field. We could stop teaching and lecturing about the way that UX should be, and begin to talk to people about what a UX job really is. This seems extreme, because if we aren’t talking about the way that UX should be, the profession would never evolve into something better. However, maybe we can stop ignoring what UX in an organization is today in our classrooms, lectures, and workshops. This would mean more people and companies being real about what user experience is in their organizations and why. This could help people new to the field understand that UX is not all roses, and that most of the time the business model is deliverables based (especially in client services) and thus deliverables will be created. Although this is a possible solution, I’m not sure it would work on its own.

Another option, is that we do nothing. Meaning, we let people make up their own minds about what they think UX, and if they want to believe that it’s all wondrous, let them. At some point people are responsible for setting their own expectations, and if one is not equipping themselves by asking the right questions in their interviews (i.e. How often do you do research? How do you test solutions with users? What are the chances I’ll be working in those roles?), then let them fall hard when they meet reality.

Another option would be to advertise the reality of the professional domain. Meaning, explaining that there are only so many jobs at IDEO, Frog, and the like that really deal with the cool stuff, and the chances of you getting one, at least as your first UX role, are pretty low. I think that it is important for us to recognize great experience design in this field. We need to examine it, understand it, and then apply it to our own professions. BUT, I think it is even more important to balance that recognition with reality. Once we are able to view UX through a real lense, only then will we be able to repair the broken pieces. Even people that work at these big firms are stuck doing wireframes, in fact many of them are. However, the really good ones are out talking about the exact opposite, thus, hiding this fact and throwing off expectations.

I think that it comes down to a mixture of these solutions including us admitting what UX really is in most organizations. This is the core of bridging the gap. The point being by admitting where we are we can move forward from it. But, by denying where we currently are, pretending we are in a way better place, and then making that better place our view of “reality”, we are doing a huge disservice to those that are looking to enter the field as well as to the field itself. Put simply, we need to start keeping it real. We need to admit to ourselves that our industry is flawed, and then admit to others the flaws that we see. We also need to spend more time solving those flaws in a real way. This means not just talking about a new way to do ideation, but also giving a case study of how to implement change in organizations, even from the lowest level, so that new ways to do ideation can take root. We need to start to look away from just the activities we want to do, but look to ways to bring those activities into every workplace, not just the really cool ones.

The intended outcome of bridging this gap is two fold. Not only will we keep new people passionate about the UX field, but more importantly we will be in a better place to evolve the UX field. By admitting our flaws we’ll be able to change them into something better, and move the UX field forward so that we can better utilize the huge amount of talent and value we can bring. Once we do this, only then can we really look at the ground breaking players and think, wow I could really use that methodology on this project I’m working on, otherwise, we are just looking through the looking glass.