“At its best, user experience design involves more than form and content and behavior, crafted in a meaningful context that leaves an impact over time. The highest aspirations of our profession will only be achieved when leadership and excellence are joined. Our profession as a whole must demonstrate the understanding and perspectives that can only come from the intertwingling of many different backgrounds, cultures, and experiences.” – Will Evans
Read more in Will’s article “It’s Time to Start a Revolution…”
User Experience is a relatively new field. I’d be hard pressed to find someone who grew up saying “I want to be a User Experience Designer!” Everyone has their own stories about how they first got into UX, and they’re always fascinating to hear. It seems as though most people in this field happen upon it as an evolution of another career, through a library science, psychology, design, or other UX-related degree, or out of serendipitous discovery. My story is a mix of the latter two.
I’ll tell my story as a way of helping you remember your reasons for getting into this field and why you stay in it despite its challenges.
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“To me it’s very hard to make your customers happy if you’re not happy yourself. That has to start from within. You have to be happy with the work you’re doing, happy with the products that you’re producing in order to really truly make your customers happy. It’s very much a positive feedback cycle. When you like what you do, you’re going to create something that’s better than if you don’t like what you do. All things being equal, your customers are going to like you and your product a lot more. ” – David Heinemeier Hansson
Read more in UX Magazine’s interview with David entitled “Less is Better.”
“If we are going to succeed in anything, especially the ever changing design world, we are going to have to have a strong passion for what we do… Our passion is going to be the driving force behind our motivation (even when we have none) to be the best, to make a contribution to the design community. It will provide the fuel to go the extra mile for clients and for ourselves.” – Aaron Irizarry
Read more from Aaron in his article “How to Stay Ahead of the Curve as a Designer.”
“I believe that all user experience designers are ‘rotten with imperfection’–every time we get something we lust for, we choose something else to want. User experience design is similar; it does NOT end–once you’ve turned over a great finished product… well, it’s not finished. It’s time to evaluate, update and repeat, because users are pretty ‘rotten with imperfection’, themselves. Embrace the rotten-ness. Don’t look forward to the end of a project, look forward to the next opportunity to improve.” – Russ Unger
Listen to Peachpit’s Author Talk with Russ and Carolyn Chandler, or view Russ’ transcript of his portions of the interview to read more about his thoughts on the importance of user experience design.
“While each discipline on the product team has its role to play, it is the true teamwork and collaboration of a cohesive product team that makes great user experiences possible.” -Pabini Gabriel-Petit
Read Pabini’s article “Sharing Ownership of UX” on UXmatters for her thoughts on how the entire product team must work together when making product decisions.
Catriona Cornett
