November/December 2018 | Looking to the future
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THE STATE OF UX IN 2019
As we head into 2019, let’s look at what the future holds.
1. UX is such a new discipline that people are jumping into lead roles quite early in their careers. Which is to say, not all job titles reflect experience.
a. Everyone is looking for senior designers, and how do you screen for people who have 10+ years of experience when the discipline itself is still in its infancy. Seniority is no longer attached to years at work, but rather a reflection on one’s emotional maturity and influence.
2. We’re all busy (duh), which is negatively affecting progress. Don’t just do your feature work; make sure you’re growing your foundational knowledge of UX and design.
3. There’s a lot of great design out there today, which looks great, but it’s not saving the world like we thought it would.
a. So stand up for what you believe in.
4. Scrap the attention economy, and break the addiction cycle. Build products that help people finish tasks quickly so they can get off their devices and live.
5. Formulas are becoming commonplace. Flex your artistic muscles, and come up with something fresh.
6. Designers should understand code, sure, but now there are frictionless programs that translate design sketches to code, so it’s more important that designers know collaborative design tools that allow them to work with engineers in the same space.
7. Think about the whole experience of your product, not just the look. What’s your story?
8. Be part of a collaborative, transparent group of designers. Don’t be secretive about your methods.
9. The exciting new technologies of recent years need our help to make them fully functional. Stop seeking what’s brand new—fill in the gaps of existing technologies like AI, chatbots, and IoT, and you’ll win the game.
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THE CALM PLACE
Take a moment away from meal planning and creating the perfect holiday gifts to relax. Go to the calm place. Return as often as needed.
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HIDDEN PRIVILEGE IN DESIGN TEAMS
The challenge with any form of privilege is that it’s hard to realize you have that privilege because you’re inside its bubble. Identifying other people’s privilege – the kind you don’t have – easy peasy. Recognizing your own and understanding the benefits that privilege confers on you? Much harder.
The design team described in this essay is overwhelmingly white, and the implication is that most design teams are similarly homogenous. I don’t work on a homogenous team, so I first thought, somewhat defensively, “We bring our worldly, diverse perspectives to bear on our design!” And that’s true. But. We’re an educated team. We work for a world-famous company that produces a lot of wealth. We live in an affluent part of the country. We know where our next paycheck is coming from.
We may hail from different parts of the world and different parts of the US, but we bear similarities, and surely those privileges confer on us advantages that blind us to the needs of the very people we’re designing for.
How do we open our eyes? We have accessibility teams, on-site facilities where we can experience our products through other eyes, a high bar of accessibility requirements to meet, extensive user testing, and each of those help us to see a little differently, to open our eyes wider.
Here’s a crazy-long list of best practices for making forms better. What would you add?
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DESIGNING FORMS
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BEAUTIFUL TEENAGE BRAINS
Teenagers are acting just the way they’re supposed to. Deep friendships, independence, fear of social exclusion, countless selfies – all normal.
Professor Sarah-Jayne Blakemore is here to tell you that the teenage brain is beautiful and brilliant. Teens want to be included, independent, and accepted. And they want to sleep in, dangit. Cut them some slack, and remember that they are in a similar brain-development place as toddlers.