Is design getting in my way of UX design?
Tags: User Experience, Tech, Design, UI, UX

Is design getting in my way of UX design?

Reading the job descriptions of ‘UX Designer’ makes me wonder if ‘design’ is the keyword rather than ‘user-experience-design’.

Most of today’s designers and art directors would have had some experience in designing webpages or app interfaces in their professional life. So does this give them an advantage in the field of UX Design?

Scanning job sites for positions in UX Design seems to tell me that this is true.

Previously on days of my life…

So what’re you up to these days?

I’m doing a course in UX design.

Job switching to design, huh? Didn’t know you could draw…

I don’t need to really draw. It’s not visual design. I’m learning to design the user experience. So just need to sketch things like wireframes and…

Oh! Interesting…

Though I’ve graduated, I still can’t relate to the title ‘UX Designer’ — mainly because of the ‘design’ part. However, Google’s ‘Quick, Draw!’ can be a confidence booster as seen in my results:

This is fun! Try your doodling skills here.

When I look at my wireframes, I don’t think they’re that bad. But I do take longer, compared to my classmates who have a visual design background.

Sketches of an app I was designing for a class project

But when I come across articles like this and this, my confidence level drops and I start to wonder: Are these the expected industry standards?

What’s worse? I can’t even visualize myself becoming this good:

Ui Sketch by Anthony Lagoon from Underbelly

Nothing compares 2 U-xd

I know that only practice and perseverance will make me better at what I’m weak at. But I still couldn’t resist looking for a quick cure for my hang-up.

My User Experience Instructor, Nie Zhenzhi, from General Assembly, assured me thus:

“Different companies and projects require different skill sets. The only standard required for wireframes is to go back to the purpose of it: Does it convey your idea and serve as a reference documentation for others in the team?”

A former classmate who is now a UX-Designer-of-one at a startup revealed,

“Wireframes and UI designs are indeed the main deliverables. But there are so many patterns and so much inspiration out there to emulate so even if you don’t feel 100% comfortable in designing something killer, you can make do for the sake of producing a minimum viable product. Emphasis on minimum due to limited time and resources. Odds are, there might not be anyone else in the office who is more qualified anyway, so the process of getting those deliverables out is mostly up to me.”

Another classmate, Janyce Phoa, who is now working at an app development agency, disclosed, “Most of the UX design is really done by me, though the developers are mindful of the user flow and not just system flow. As for the visual design portion, we have to at least deliver a legit-looking piece of work if there is no UI person on the team to handle that. And to work around the limitations of time and budget for the project. Animations are usually only possible for big projects.”

What you see is what you get

Excuse the cognitive bias. Call me sour grapes. In my job hunt, I feel under-qualified because of the seeming emphasis on design in job descriptions:

Hands-on visual/art design required

Art or Graphic Design Degree

Develop storyboards and bring these to life through illustrations

Create pixel-perfect interactive prototypes

Expertise in relevant design tools like Photoshop, Illustrator, Indesign…

These requirements are not even for the position of “UI Designer”. Just part of the list of skill sets that includes usual UX tools like user interviews, user testing, customer journey mapping and more. One even specify that you have to be “knowledgeable about HTML5, CSS3, JavaScript, AJAX and MVC Frameworks such as AngularJS, Backbone, Ember, Node and React.”

Overwhelmed by the amount of skills and experience that are seemingly required to be a UX Designer, I have not applied for many jobs.

My career coach, Bryant Tang, assures me that recruiter might list many skills because (a) they do not know what they are looking for, or (b) they wish to insure themselves against any future disputes.

“Though one of the essences of UX is design, the uninformed would think that UX is the same as UI, and is the same as front-end development…”

Every home should have one

I still cringe when I recall a client who said, “I’m a visual person. I need to see the complete visuals before I can decide on the concept to go with.”

Me thinking aloud:

A visual person is someone who is able to visualize based on conceptual sketches, you ****!

Like that visual person, there is, perhaps, a lack of understanding among recruiters, of the job requirements of various roles in UX Design. Hence, we keep seeing this rather daunting laundry list of skills and experience.

Or perhaps, I’m just struggling to keep up with the world and not realizing that this is indeed the new new requirement of work! No one multitasks any more because you only have one job!

It’s just that this one job requires you to perform user interviews, content mapping, information architecture, affinity mapping, feature prioritization, persona creation, user flows, customer journey maps, business intelligence gathering, competitive analysis, wireframing, user testing, prototyping, presenting, project management, front-end development…

No wonder some obvious errors can slip by an entire team like this:

An outstanding standee at a supermarket in Singapore

The proliferation of tools for the UX design process also may also help to reinforce the idea that one person can, and should do it all. After all, these tools are promoted as time saving, cost saving, easy to use and great for team collaboration. So why do we still need so many people for the project?

Lastly, until there is an established metric to measure and highlight the business benefits of implementing UX design (maybe there already is but I am not aware of it), this industry might go the way of the creative industry and rely on creative awards to showcase its relevance.

Tip: Google ‘UX awards’ if you’re keen to participate in one.

In the meantime, more companies will be hiring UX designers or creating UXD departments simply because it seems to be the latest must-have item in the organization. Which reminds me of this video about business buzzwords:

I can see clearly now

Now that I feel more confident about my abilities, I might just apply for jobs in UX design like an email marketer hoping for the most effective CPM.

Like my friend advised, “You won’t be called for an interview if they think that you don’t meet their criteria, so just flood their inbox! After all, they asked for it by not being clear in their job description.”

Sorry recruiters!

Feel free to correct or educate me by leaving a comment. Thank you.