Last week I was supposed to be doing this talk during the UXCampLondon but unfortunately I couldn’t make it, so I’m posting it here.
This is part one of three posts and I’d love to hear what you think about it. I’m pretty sure you’ll have a different view on it.
I'm the UX expert. I have the ultimate truth.
I had this attitude for ages, and I've seen it constantly in other ux'ers. Assuming that only those with an UX, Information Architect or similar title in their business cards can have a valid opinion on user experience.This creates unpleasant situations, affecting our ability to successfully deliver our projects and ultimately hurting ourselves. We think that WE are right, and the rest of the world is wrong.
Ok maybe I’m exaggerating a little bit, but I’m sure we’ve all seen this happening. It normally leads into a position where it’s your word against the rest, and you end up constantly fighting to make your thoughts prevail. An undesirable situation.
With experience we learn that other people’s views can be as valid or more than ours, specially when we’ve spent weeks or months immersed in a project and our thoughts are not as fresh as desired.
It seems to me that we constantly try to protect ourselves, acting defensively and trying to show everyone that we know about this. Like if we were going to be redundant if we don’t do so.
Actually, I’ve learned that few people wants to do our job. Yes they’re excited about the projects like us, but visual designers, marketeers, developers etc don’t want to do our job. They solve different types of problems, they think in a different away. They find journeys, sitemaps and wireframes really boring. It’s ok if someone else do them, but I’m sure they they don’t want to take that role. That’s why they hire us.
So we should stop being afraid of accepting other people’s ideas, that doesn’t make us more vulnerable. Quite the contrary, it strengthens our relationship with peers and clients.