In my experience at EchoUser, I've come to realize that user experience (UX) design goes beyond just "design work" or sketching and prototyping. It's about making strategic decisions that contribute to better overall user experiences, and people often overlook this aspect of the process.
Whenever people ask me what I do at EchoUser, I typically end up using some combination of the words “design”, “user experience” and “user research”. The problem is, to normal people/non-designers, the only word that makes any sense is “design” – so in the eyes of most people, from my roommates to my grandmother, I’m a designer and I “design things”.
The funny thing is, many clients seem to approach EchoUser’s work the same way: they often ask us to design some_thing_, which assumes that doing the actual work of design (sketching, prototyping, pushing pixels around, etc.) is mechanical and straightforward. “Design me a new website”, “design a better user experience for my product”, “design the future of my webapp”… these requests all assume that UX is just about putting pen to paper, when really what they’re asking for is more akin to UX strategy.
The idea that UX designers, while outwardly doing “design work” are actually doing strategic work isn’t a new one. In fact, as I was writing this post Johnny Holland was also writing about UX strategy and gamification, and how as designers we’re having to make more and more strategic choices (especially around gamification). Which is great – because it only reinforces something I’ve suspected for ages: that designing UX in a vacuum and not making strategic decisions and recommendations is impossible.
More next week on this, and “The Design Black Box”. Happy weekend!
