Michael Wood

Stories

There is a heroism about being a User Experience Designer which while initially fun has long since become a problem.

User Experience - the loop of finding out what people want, and doing it - has the virtue of function in that it works, and the results are obvious to all. The project flounders, and we are Superman, saving the day with a focus group and an updated pattern.

Or so it goes on some projects, not so much on others.

On other projects, projects where there is a tension between contributing stakeholders, our devotion to objective research and solutions is set between a variety of ideas or business guarantees. We might be able to save the day, but the team we are in are not ready for our solution, or they have commitments which go against it, and what do we do then.

This is what experience is. The ability to navigate working with people.

User experience virtues are important to me, but there are other virtues that I prize. Virtues like collaboration, like consensus within a team, and like representing the thoughts of colleagues, sometimes at the expense of my own.

User Experience should be a conversation with colleagues, not an assertion, and the work which comes out of UX should be something which captures the solution of the team, sometimes even when that solutions goes against what I personally would favour.

This is not to say that you'd ever publish something bad, or wrong, but that a great collaboration in a team means representing team member's solutions with fairness and honesty, and building trust with them that you are an approachable collaborator, not someone who thinks they are the Superman of web design, waiting to swoop in and save the day.