It is so nice to hear this coming from a couple of designers.
Actually, you might be surprised to learn that Roman Mars and Kurt Kohlstedt (the authors behind the book and the podcast) are not designers. Sure could have fooled me. Boy, do they ever speak the language (and look the part as well).
I think they’re really onto something here though. And it may even be something that real designers sometimes have a hard time seeing.
Designers sure are hot these days. Design Thinking and “design thinking” (the light version that seems to pervade everything nowadays) make it sound like designers could solve all the world’s problems given enough sticky notes and ideation sessions.
What they often forget, though, is their incarnation in a previous life. Yeah, industrial designers came up with some cool stuff, but most graphic designers (where most designers these days come from) can trace their lineage back to creating advertisements. As that quote above goes on, “In the commercial world, design is used to get you to buy things you don’t need.” And with the commercial world moving online, that has come to be even more the case.
It wasn’t always that way though. In the beginning, was the developer. It was something of a golden age for them, and they were pretty much left alone to do their thing. Unfortunately, their thing was not a user-friendly UI – something that became very apparent as soon as the general public started using computers.
And this is where usability types stepped in. They helped make computers easier to use. Pretty soon, pretty much everyone could make their way around a computer.
Usability was, unfortunately, spread a little thin, so a much more common development idea was to match up the business with the developers. And that’s basically all Agile really is – we’ll tell you what to build, and then we’ll leave you alone to build it.
(As you probably know, usability is not a basic part of Agile. If you’re going to get it in there, you’re going to have to bolt it on. Same for UX in general.)
And that’s where design came in. They actually make some real sense as the intermediary between the business and the developers, especially if user experience is something given more than a passing nod.
They also, though, make a good match when it comes to selling, or persuasion, or coercion if you will. And that’s what the Internet has become these days. How do you grab people’s attention? How do you get them to click that call to action? How do you get them to sign up for that account, purchase that item, or share that personal info as quick as possible? How to get them in the funnel? How to get them to stay there? How do you get them to buy, buy, buy?
Hard to believe, but there was a time when UX was a lot more about the user – helping them find some info, do a task, solve a problem… And I miss that.
