Lately with clients I’ve started (somewhat jokingly) calling us “UX therapists”. This is because no matter how much someone might want to focus on the UI, the front end designs, the pixels, as the output of our hard work, most of the time this is just the tip of the iceberg. The real work: the blood, sweat and tears, the endless design sessions and workshops, the arguments, discussions and brainstorms – all of this represents the thinking that got us to the final design. Without the thinking you have pretty pixels that are more or less useless. There’s a constant pressure, especially with engineering mindsets, to separate the church and state of design process (the thinking) and design output (the pixels), but this, I believe, is a big mistake.
So as UX therapists, we spend the bulk of our time thinking deeply about design problems, and creating the space for our clients to tackle problems and questions they wouldn’t be able to on their own. There’s a reason real therapists ask dozens of questions: it’s not their job to tell you what to do, but more to give you permission to work on your own sh*t in a safe environment – and provide guidance along the way. Dr Phil might only have an hour-long show, but he spends many many hours behind the scenes actually hashing out things with his clients.
The key, then, is to make sure that we, as designers-cum-therapists, make our clients understand that while they will get beautiful, functional and intuitive designs in the end – they have to pay attention to and engage with the process as well, or everyone will suffer.
Our client and friends over at Threadflip launched this week to a lot of fanfare, with spots on TechCrunch and elsewhere all over the web. The novel clothing marketplace is making a splash with its luxurious feel and awesome user experience, and should be poised to reinvent the way women swap clothes.
I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention that Threadflip’s design greatness is due in some (large!) part to our very own Amaya Lascano, who put her stylish fingerprints all over the UI and user experience while working with the Threadflip team. So kudos to Amaya and Threadflip for kicking serious UX butt – here’s to Threadflip being a huge success.
From Harry West, CEO over at Continuum, about the shifting sands of business growth and progress:
There’s always a tendency for people to go: “Well, I know the business we’re in because I can see it. I see it every day. That’s the business we’re in, right?” Well, that was the business you were in.
Right now we are in the process of inventing the business we will be in. When people see that, it takes off. But until people can see it, until it’s in some way real and relevant to them, they don’t know what they can do to be part of it.
