UX Design And My IKIGAI
By: Dennis Hambeukers
Tags: Design Leadership, Agile, UX Design, Innovation, Ikigai

What is your superpower? I dunno. We all know this type of workshop ice breakers. What am I good at? What do I love? What does the world need? What can I get paid for? If you combine all these questions, you will find the reason you exist, your Ikigai.

Ikigai

The end of the year is dawning. Always a good time for some reflection. When I think about these questions, I find that there are a three things I love:

The top of the UX pyramid (UX design).

Navigating complexity by finding the right questions with design (Business problem solving).

Organizing in a way that the human potential for creativity is optimized (Leadership).

When I think of what type of projects, what type of work I would like to do, they would ideally be at the intersection of these three things. Let me dive into them one by one and try to find the common ground and sweet spot.

The top of the UX pyramid

When I think about why I love UX, I think about the top of the UX pyramid. If you have come in contact with UX design, you will have seen this in some shape or form before:

The UX pyramid

The potential of UX is to be meaningful. Not just convenient or pleasurable, but meaningful. That is a high goal to aim for. But that is where the magic happens. When I think about purpose, my purpose, the purpose of the organization I am working for, the UX design has to mean something, make a difference in people’s lives. How a design can create a difference, how a design can be meaningful can be in different ways. I can think of a few:

The UX design solves a meaningful problem . If people, organizations, are struggling with a problem that is very important to them and if the UX design can solve that problem, you create meaning, you can create a change in people’s lives that makes their lives better. Most of the time this is a tough problem. Otherwise it would have been solved. UX design can bring the perspective that is needed to solve a problem that is hard but essential.

. If people, organizations, are struggling with a problem that is very important to them and if the UX design can solve that problem, you create meaning, you can create a change in people’s lives that makes their lives better. Most of the time this is a tough problem. Otherwise it would have been solved. UX design can bring the perspective that is needed to solve a problem that is hard but essential. The UX design solves a not so urgent problem in a meaningful way. Here is not what you solve, but the way you solve it. Lots of organizations face the same problems. The organization that solves the problem in a way that can go one step beyond just being pleasurable, has a huge advantage. To do this, you need to find a hook, an insight that nobody else has and execute it in a way that is a tough act to follow. More often than not, this is not just about a nice UI but about the organization of the service.

When you can move people with UX design, it becomes meaningful. UX design, to me, it not about pixels and code but about people, their work, their lives. When UX design can add to the purpose people have in their work and lives, it’s magical. UX design has the potential to change the way people work, think, behave. It impacts their mental models of how they see the world. It can enhance the capacity of people. That is real beauty.

Navigating complexity by finding the right questions with design

UX design is a puzzle. To really solve a problem, you have to be able to get to the core of it, dissect it. To solve a problem in a way that it becomes meaningful, you have to find the right questions. The right questions are much more important than solutions. The trick of design is that it can find the right questions through proposing solutions. Solutions can uncover questions and split open a problem. Most people are waking up to the fact that traditional, linear, scientific-management-based ways of approaching problems don’t perform well in complex situations with lots of uncertainty. Design is a far superior way to navigate complexity. In a previous post, I explained in this diagram:

The problem-solving performance of the two ways of problem-solving mapped against complexity

I personally love complexity and uncertainty. I am quickly bored if things are know or have already been done before. To me, design has the biggest added value if I can use it to navigate through complexity that cannot be solved with more traditional business problem solving methods. Prototyping, learning, testing, that is the way of the designer, that is the way to innovate. For this to happen, UX design needs to understand business and technology as well. UX design can only connect if it understands.

“The things that we love tell us who we are.” — Thomas Aquinas

Organizing in a way that the human potential for creativity is optimized

To get to the top of the UX pyramid, to create meaning, to use UX design as a way to create business value by helping it navigate complexity, you need a certain way of working, of collaborating. Next to UX design, complex problem solving and innovation, my third love is organization. If I am talking about solving business problems and finding those insights on which you can build a meaningful solution, I cannot separate that from how you organize your projects. An Agile, Lean Startup, User Centered way of working, co-creation is quintessential. UX design is not a solitary occupation. It is most valuable when it is at the center of storm of stakeholders, technology, users, business models. UX design can be a platform on which people can come together and create meaningful solutions. The better the UX, the more the creativity of stakeholders is enlarged, the more engaged people become. For this, you need openness, trust, a learning organization. There is only one way to create meaningful UX design and that is to learn in a project, to uncover the relevant questions one by one, to discover the gems of insights. Learning can only happen if there is engagement, trust, openness, willingness to fail. That is why my third pillar is about organization, project management, leadership.

Bringing it all together

I have been lucky enough to work on projects that were at the center of these three pillars I love. I am also inspired by projects of others that hit this sweet spot. In the projects of others, I can only if they have made it to the top of the UX pyramid, but I know that requires navigating complex problem spaces in agile ways that enable learning. It takes a lot to get to the top of the UX pyramid. But when you get there, there is nothing more fulfilling (professionally). Everything has to fall into place. And when that happens, you create magic. It requires a meaningful problem, a learning organization, a skilled UX designer, budget, vision, convincing power, an Agile process, openness, trust, team spirit, courage, mandate. Luckily, this is what I am good at, what I love, what the world needs and what people are willing to pay for. This is what I want from my job, my life.

Solving complex business problems with meaningful UX Design in a way that leverages the human potential for creativity.

This is my Ikigai. Hope you also have yours :)

If you want to read about Ikigai, I recommend this book:

Here is a snapshot of my Ikigai and some of the books that have accompanied me along the way: