This is a brilliant, basic, non-obvious topic for an article. I am jealous that I didn’t write about it myself. :)
It is similar to the idea of saying “I don’t know” — it’s something that is surprisingly hard to do.
Why is it hard?
1) It’s an ego thing. Asking for help means being vulnerable, and we humans hate being vulnerable.
2) You usually have to know you need help to ask for it.
The second point is what the linked article goes into a lot, and they offer some great tactics for managing your uncertainty, even when you don’t realize you’re uncertain.
In UX, I think “empathy” gets all the attention, but “understanding” is really the thing we should be talking about. Understanding things that are hard to understand is hard, and that’s why most people settle for the feeling of understanding instead.
Have you ever asked someone what a book was about, and they struggled to give you more than a couple sentences, or one of the anecdotes from the book? Odds are, they did probably read it, but they didn’t actually understand it.
As UX designers, we don’t have the luxury of that mistake. We need to know the difference between feeling like we understand (aka empathy) and actually understanding the user’s problems.
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I have been quiet for a while. That’s about to change.
A/B testing in a nutshell.
Win/win, every time. Unless you’re just guessing. Then it’s neither.
William F. Whitaker
American Artist
The only reason you can’t think of many “old masters” in digital UX is because the internet hasn’t been around long enough yet. You could be one of the first. Start now. Also, women have exactly as much potential… read the meaning, not just the fragile words. ;)
As a general principle, there are two ways you can brainstorm ideas, and it all depends on where you start: with possibilities or limitations. However, one of those methods will often lead you down the wrong path, and the other prevents that risk.
When it comes to “creativity” most people tend to start with inspiration and work toward something useful.
Anyone who has a process that starts with “inspiration”… isn’t actually solving problems. Not very often, anyway.
One curious thing you will notice if you talk to a lot of experienced designers (in any type of design) is that most of them don’t start with inspiration. In fact, they kind of hate working like that.
Instead, they seem to love limitations.
As an inexperienced designer, this might seem like the worst thing ever.
Doesn’t that, like, kill all the cool ideas, man?
Yes. Yes it does. And that is exactly why the experienced designers like to start there.
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Richard Banfield
Author of Design Leadership, Product Leadership, Design Sprints
A US scientist, on the reason why it is hard to design a bear-proof garbage can.
Blatantly stolen Enthusiastically quoted from this
Quora answer by Claire Jordan.
If you take away anything from this blog, one good lesson would be: UX design is not about what you like the most, or what looks the best.
That means: to be a better designer you need to be a better thinker.
A better thinker? What does that mean? Better than what? Better than who?
You need to think better than your intuition tells you to. Intuition is the default way of thinking, not the best way of thinking. When we make something “intuitive” it doesn’t mean that it is smart… it means that it fits the way people think by default. I could almost use the word “subconscious” here.
So, if “intuitive” is the lowest form of thinking, what does “better thinking” look like?
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