Totally Not My Most Brilliant Thoughts on User Experience Design

Please computer blog catch my most useful UX thoughts.

The meta of this post is I'm trying to avoid the ever-creeping-up-on-me-urge to be perfect with some kinds of posts. Especially UX related posts.

Let's see if this post's title set me free.

Maybe I should rename the blog to something similar. That'd be too much of an OK Soda move I think. Funny though how things work with expectations and fear of failing. It's like if any of the folks in the design industry that I read their books and articles, if they read this blog, I'm worried they'll hate my work. I'm working on letting that go, that kind of fear isn't a helpful thing.

Sure there are times to examine with great focus and concern for others. Such as when you make something at a scale beyond an individual thinking things through and exploring ideas. Making systems for lots of people, that's a good time to bring all the layers of scrutiny and evaluation you can to test the fitness, fairness, and awareness of a design.

Writing down some thoughts to even see what you think about matters is not one of those times. Expecting too much out of any one post is a perfectionism trap.

Why am I talking about this?

I don't know all there is about the practice but I've learned enough to help others. My intent is to make UX a very frequent topic in these posts. I did a few UX posts in January, not much in February. Writing about UX is one way I wish to show up in this community of practice. To be a helpful resource for others:

• Folks who are starting out with UX whether it's your main role or a new special power you're adding to your business, art, or engineering work.
• Those who've practiced UX design for a while and you're looking for a common voice, some fresh take to add to your toolbox, and an encouraging example that it's worth sharing your UX experience to spread the powers of human centered design and systemic thinking.

There Isn't a Regularly Scheduled Program Other Than Publish Daily

I promise to share more thoughts about practicing UX, UX for all, and certainly UX Mindset.

Making these daily posts, it's part of the point to gather ideas, to refine some of them, and to sharpen my habit of publishing something interesting daily. It's a mix of product development, skill building, confidence, and community gathering.

I'm an experienced practitioner, learner, and teacher of UX design. Yet here I am dealing with imposter syndrome especially when I work on my UX posts.

How about we turn this post into one directly about UX design instead of only dealing with feelings about writing?

Why Care About UX?

Here are five brief takes on UX design, what it is, why care about it, and once you do: now what.

• UX is a connective practice that helps make sense of how humans feel and make use of things in the world.
• UX helps us learn about the impact of what we make and how we can make it better. Better through the lens of how people experience what we make and outcomes from using it.
• How you see UX is heavily filtered based on what you've seen it do before and based on if you think it matters to your main discipline. Sometimes things get mislabeled as UX such as only focusing on surface features of other successful products instead of the reasons and learning that shaped the choices that shaped the products. UX can show up in projects and organizations both tactically and strategically which probably helps add to misunderstanding UX.
• UX doesn't stop at learning from and learning with your users. It's about all the humans connected in your endeavor. Create an environment that is fed by and craves learning to include all your audiences connected to your service. Get as many different teams and skills involved as you can so the knowledge gained is owned by the whole organization.
• Much of the impact on a team or organization that chooses to add UX design to how they work is amplified or nullified by how decisions are made. In the face of learning from research and creating credible designs through iterative testing if we meet those ideas and choose to ignore or filter based on what we want to hear then that's the limit of the impact of UX.

Revisiting the Worry After That

Part of publishing about a topic like UX is participating in the community ongoing flow of ideas. I'd be surprised if folks in the industry I read would be reading this. Not that these words aren't worth their attention, it's that I don't think these words are mostly for them as an audience. I'm not concerned about advancing the state of the art in UX. I'm more concerned about getting more people involved in and encouraged to use the tools of UX.

Which of the five points connected with you most? Why do you think that is? I've been enabling comments on more posts, and I'm reachable in other places socially and email which I mention that address at the end of almost every Polytechnicast.