An accidental purveyor of cut-price UX
By: Steven Allison
Tags: User Experience Design, User Experience, UX Design, Design, UX

An accidental purveyor of cut-price UX

You know it’s a good day when a casual trip to your local charity store delivers more user experience than you’d bargained for.

There’s nothing better than a second-hand store. Whenever one of these joints lures me in (which is often), there’s usually a nice little gem or two tucked away, among its musty wares, in some dark and dusty corner. I can always sniff them out through racks of moth-eaten Argyle pullovers and the dog-eared vinyl that vintage record shops haven’t snaffled to flog at puffed-up prices. And each time, I’m as pleased as punch.

When non-essential retail made its post-Covid comeback earlier this year, I took a stroll to see which stores had reopened their doors to customers and found myself at the entrance of my local British Heart Foundation.

In I went, bargain-hunter mode activated. After flicking through some of said vinyl, only to discover more Engelbert Humperdinck and Florence Foster Jenkins than a person should ever have to face, I came across a discarded Moleskine book. I love a Moleskine book, so that was definitely coming home with me. And at a normal price of over a tenner, it was £1.99 well spent.

With the slightly battered black Moleskine in my man-bag, alongside a copy of Isaac Asimov’s The Robots of Dawn (the third novel in the author’s Robot Series), I was hot to trot. The only snag? I got home to discover someone had used the notebook — it was cover-to-cover with near-illegible handwriting.

Ordinarily, I’d be peeved but wouldn’t return the item. At the end of the day, it had most likely been donated in error. And we’re talking about charity here — I’m not a total monster!

However, there was no need for any minor fury at all. Why? Because, by sheer happenstance, what at first glance appeared to be nonsensical scribbles turned out to be the detailed notes of a User Experience (UX) Designer. Given that I’ve been writing a lot about UX for a client recently, I think you’ll agree it was quite the coincidence.

If you’re unfamiliar with UX (which I was before beginning to work for my client), in a nutshell, it essentially relates to making people feel great when they’re interacting with digital systems — websites, apps, software, etc. Today, it’s normally signified by some form of Human-Computer Interaction, which is another field I’ve been writing on of late.

Tickled by the twist of fate, I leafed through the Moleskine and found all sorts. Notes reflecting the mundanity of everyday life were scattered everywhere. “I love you — can’t wait for you to come back,” the former owner writes on one page after telling their sweetheart: “Don’t forget your juice in the fridge.”

Cute, right?

Among these, all sorts about algorithms, website buttons, data, user bases, dashboards, notifications, and much more. And in various formats too: sketches and diagrams and tables and infographics.

Setting eyes on those personal and professional snippets felt the tiniest bit invasive, but I got over that fast. Technically, after paying the princely sum of £1.99, I did own those snippets. And ultimately, any guilt I experienced was reversed by some strange sense of honour at being privy to this person’s creative process.

As consumers, you see great UX design every day. For example, each time you hopped on Zoom over lockdown to chat with friends, family or colleagues, or each time you found yourself caught in a Netflix hole, wolfing down episode after episode of The Crown, you were able to move around those apps with ease — that’s no happy accident. It’s UX designers behind your pleasant user journey around Zoom or Netflix — or whatever digital location you choose to frequent.

So, as I say, yes, good UX design is ubiquitous. But how often do people get to witness the creative process a UX designer goes through to get from idea to user-centric final product. Unless you work in the field, my guess is never.

Although I write on this topic a lot these days, I only really cover the projects my client is involved in. For all other systems, I have to dig into my imagination to picture how a UX team moved from A-Z.

The stuff in my shabby used Moleskine, however, is an entirely different ball game — I wasn’t supposed to see this. It feels naughty, in a sense. I guess this is something close to creative voyeurism — like I’ve fortuitously stumbled into the mind of a talented designer when they’re in the zone.

But it makes sense because humans are innately curious beings on the whole, so why wouldn’t our sense of curiosity blow up when it comes to areas we’re interested in?

I may poke around UX, but I’m no expert by any stretch of the imagination. Even as I learn more about this fascinating world, no level of understanding will ever curb what Mario Livio refers to as “epistemic curiosity” in his 2017 book Why? What makes Us Curious? This is our hunger for knowledge, to learn new things. It makes us “infovores,” he says. In essence, then, as a starving infovore, this notebook is food for my epistemic curiosity.

I should make it clear that, while I do have an insatiable appetite for knowledge, I’d never pinch another person’s ideas — I mean, come on, I’m not a corporate spy in Chris Nolan’s sci-fi action thriller Inception. So none of the ideas in the Moleskine will ever find their way into my writing on the topic.

Speaking of sci-fi, before I head off to get stuck into my new Asimov robot whodunit, just a quick note: I’d considered posting pictures from the notebook, but I’d like to avoid trouble. The writer cites some of the world’s best-known organizations, and the last thing I want is a pack of hungry lawyers snapping at me.

Right, that’s enough for one day — time for some machines and murder, Asimov style!