What are the top challenges for a UX designer in a project
By: Sujit Devkar
Tags: Ux Designer, Product Design, Product Designer, UX Design, User Experience

“Design is not a single object or dimension. Design is messy and complex.” —Natasha Jen

Working as a UX designer and leading a project is a rewarding experience. Every project adds value to your portfolio and it teaches you a lot. You will also face challenges with — work, co-workers, processes and so on. You will be able to solve most of the challenges, but some will stress you. These are the challenges that will help you grow as a designer. Here are some of the challenges and my tips on tackling them.

1. Understanding of the domain

“You must continue to gain expertise, but avoid thinking like an expert.” ~ Denis Waitley

A project from an all-new domain can be daunting at the beginning. You not only have a limited idea about the domain, but the user vocabulary prevents you from having a good discussion with your users, business people and other stakeholders. This is not a good place to be in.

Spending the initial few days exploring the domain will always save you from big trouble later on. Here, you need to be honest with your product owner about your level of understanding from the domain. When you discuss, you might get help from the subject matter experts to get the basics of the domain and the project. At times you may not be given extra time, then the ownership is on you to put in extra time. You should spend some time outside work and take some courses on YouTube, Udemy, Courses. I am sure you will get enough free stuff on the Internet.

In addition, even if you know the domain, you should have learner’s mindset. You will always learn something new from a new project. As a designer, we should always be questioning assumptions. We should be open-minded and should always be open for opportunities, and you will see unlimited possibilities for helping the business and users.

2. Contextual research

“Don’t just assume what your users want. Get out there and learn their deepest pains, and then build exactly what they need.”

When you join a project, your clients may not have confidence in you. They may feel they have very clear requirements. Or they may not know, you need to research the users. These reasons result in the unavailability of access to users. This prevents you from understanding the real needs of your user. This also stops you from evaluating your design concepts when you get there.

First of all, don’t get disheartened. You are not the only one who has this challenge. Many large corporates run into this challenge. Business analysts think they know their customers very well, and it may be true. But, they might not be observing from the designer’s point of view. It is your responsibility to speak and convey your needs as a designer.

Many companies have their own research department, they may have their own user researchers. They may have started your project under the overall company design strategy. If you find out the right people and get the data that you want from them, then you can bootstrap with that research.

If your client does not have confidence in you, then you need to build trust. You need to educate them on design and your design methodology. You may show your prior work and demonstrate how access to users help in validating needs, concepts and usability testing too.

Ultimately, you and your clients want to deliver a successful product. They have onboarded you because you are the expert in design. They will accept your position when you explain the logic with examples. And if your clients still do not agree, then the loss is theirs.

3. User experience vs user interface

“UX is not UI”

I am not going to tell you the difference between what is UX and what is UI. There are many articles written about them. Here, I am iterating the challenge we face and sometimes we may not be aware of them.

My clients are aware of my role and responsibilities as a UX designer. But, they weren’t aware during my initial days working with them. And many clients are still not aware of the role of a UX designer in the project. They think we just make the UI look good, and that’s it. Though new product owners are aware, you may need to set correct expectations during the first few meetings.

Contracts sometimes help as we ground our relationship on it. Here, we discuss the artefacts expected to be delivered and both agree to it. This prevents clients from assuming something that will not be delivered. Mike Monteiro has a very informative book called Design is a Job where he explains about contracts, choosing clients, and many other things.

4. Collaborating with stakeholders

“Coming together is a beginning. Keeping together is progress. Working together is a success.” ~ Henry Ford

All design projects require you to talk to users and many stakeholders in the company and outside. You might have to do all the talking alone or you might be accompanied by the other designers, product owner, business owners, business analyst, solution architect, etc. All projects are running at tight deadlines, and any miscommunication might lead to a problem.

To make your interactions effective, you need to build a good communication skill. This is the key to success. They will understand you or they will challenge you. They might already be working in that program. They might not want to look at a problem from another perspective. If there is any challenge you see that will not be right for the user, then you need to communicate it in such a way everyone gets it and they understand the concern if any. Ultimately, effective collaboration will result in success.

5. Working with developers

“Working in collaboration leads to a rich dialogue yielding unexpected results.” ~ Alexander Gorlizki

Well, if you are a senior person in the team and all team members are with less experience, then you will face less problem. But, if you are the junior designer, and there are senior developers in your project, then your voice may not be heard. Your developers may say they do not have component ready or they will take a lot of time in creating a component. They will feel you do not understand their problems. Sometimes, there might be issues during handoffs.

Design systems are to your rescue and your team. Most of the companies are moving towards design systems. They have components library for the designers and developers will have the libraries in Angular, Vue, React, or any preferred library. Designer and developers can then agree on them. There are standard practices for developer handoffs. Modern tools like Figma, AxureRP, Sketch are competent to help developers for the handoffs. And there are other tools in the market that are built especially for handoffs.

If you build a good rapport with your team, then you will less likely have any issue working with them. If you convey the changes proactively, then they will be happy with you.

6. Deadlines

“Goals are dreams with deadlines.”~ Diana Scharf

Most of the product teams are following agile methodology. They have multiple feature teams and teams are working parallel on a single product. Here, if you are working with one feature team, then you may still manage the work, but if you are working with multiple feature teams, then you need to manage not only your work but team expectations and deadlines for those teams. It may overwhelm you.

As I had mentioned earlier, you need to set clear expectations for each sprint for each team. You need to stay ahead of your developers by at least one sprint. If the product owner identifies the work for you in advance then you may streamline the design pipeline. You may then work on your part and have discussions with stakeholders and revise the wireframes and prototypes to make your life simplified. In the end, deadlines are constraints and they help you be more creative. So take them positively.

Wrapping up

Regardless of the people, domain, tools, processes and work, in the end, it all ‘depends’ on you. If you become an advocate of your users, set clear expectations to your product owner and the team, walk extra mile learning the domain and improve collaboration with your team, you will definitely tackle most of the challenges. Ultimately, the way you solve process to solve your design problems, you can use your creativity to solve the rest of the challenges.

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