

You don't need a UX specialist - pzaniewicz
http://blog.123ship.it/2013/03/you-dont-need-ux-specialist.html

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jaysonelliot
I agree with the sentiment that UX shouldn't be something that only a
specialist can consider, but the idea that it's nothing more than common sense
is a sad misunderstanding of what it takes to build a great user experience.

Graphic designers are not UX designers. If that's where the author's been
getting their ideas about UX, it's no wonder they don't see the value.

The ability to understand your users, then prioritize and design an experience
that will serve their needs while balancing business requirements and the need
for speed to get to market is far more than "common sense."

A hierarchy of things _you_ want is not going to get you to a good experience.

If you need to build an MVP quickly, and don't want your UX to suck (and you
can't get a dedicated UX person on your team), I would provide this alternate
set of steps:

1\. Know who you're building it for. Remember the mantra "you are not your
users." Even if it just means reading some published data or articles about
your users, or having a chat with a few people, anything is better than
nothing. Start from their perspective, not your own.

2\. Tell yourself a story. The best way to design a product is to design the
story of your product. Instead of starting with features and hierarchies,
start by going up to the whiteboard and drawing a few user flows. Name your
user, so you're thinking of them like a real person. (DON'T make complicated
profiles or use silly names. It's enough to just think "would Sally want to do
this?")

3\. Use your story to design your features. If there was something in your
flow that was vital, then use that feature. If you found yourself saying "yes,
but she could always do -n- instead for now," it's non-essential, and you can
leave it out.

4\. Grok usability. If you don't have anyone on your team who knows what
Fitt's Law is, or why the 10 Heuristics matter, find someone who does. This is
where "common sense" leads most people, graphic designers especially, into
pitfalls. There are a lot of UX professionals who are happy to give your
product a once-over and point out the hidden traps you might have missed. You
probably have a friend who does this for a living, and would love to help you.

5\. Build early, iterate often. This is where the author gets it right.
There's no substitute for the real world. Instead of long periods of usability
testing on prototypes, if you can handle an imperfect product going live,
you're better off watching how real users deal with it, and iterating quickly
when problems arise. Use tools like Crazyegg, Clicktale, or Mouseflow to see
what's really happening and react. Don't wait for users to tell you what's
wrong, because they often can't (or won't bother to) articulate the problem
for you.

~~~
T_T
Agreed. Original article is a dismissal of the amount of research and
consideration that goes into UX.

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jeremyt
I'm sorry, but as someone who does UX full-time, I couldn't disagree more.

I used to be a developer who felt the same way. All of this stuff is just
common sense. Then, I decided to do a career transition into full-time UX and
spent a year studying intensely.

Now, I look back on my old self and laugh. Practically everything was wrong,
and some things were horrifically wrong. There's just too much to think about
and too many fundamental concepts that you must be aware of to do good UX
(Gestalt principles, color theory, design patterns, etc.)

The way I feel about this post is about the same as developers out there feel
when your uncle says "How hard can web development be? My nephew made me a
website in Wordpress in a couple of weeks"

~~~
mheathr
Since you transitioned into full-time UX starting as a developer originally, I
am curious as to what resources you utilized to improve your knowledge of good
UX principles.

~~~
jeremyt
I've been meaning to write a blog post on it, but you know how it goes. Never
enough time.

Basically, it comes down to study + experience. But study is absolutely a
necessary prerequisite; otherwise you have no criteria to decide what went
wrong when something fails.

I did a post here about some books that I found useful

[http://www.jeremytunnell.com/posts/books-on-user-
experience-...](http://www.jeremytunnell.com/posts/books-on-user-experience-
and-user-interface-design)

I basically spent a year working part-time and studying part-time. I read
every UX book, article, and website that I could find, and then I got
experience by offering to do a heuristic analysis for startups on the
Washington DC hacker news list for $20 per hour.

This kind of thing:

[http://www.jeremytunnell.com/posts/watchparty-tv-a-
usability...](http://www.jeremytunnell.com/posts/watchparty-tv-a-usability-
analysis)

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ef4
I kinda agree with the headline, but only because I think the followup is
"Instead, you should become a UX expert".

I think many developers do themselves a disservice by not working to get good
at this stuff. It's not magic, but it takes consistent, conscious practice
like any other skill. What's more, every time you sit down to code is another
opportunity to practice, because every program has a user, and every user has
needs, expectations, and frustrations.

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T_T
Lets (for a moment) agree that we can achieve 99% of UX via common sense.

The question I would ask is: Would you make the same argument for Typography?
(I know, seems completely unrelated)

Typography, we can say, is just making text readable, organized, and
appealing. We can all read some info about kerning, leading, and spacing, and
their common ratios. Then, pick up a 'modern' typeface and that would then
bring us to 99% of making a new webapp/site beautiful in terms of type?

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jcomis
This is insulting to UX designers. It's the equivalent of saying to a dev
"development is easy, just keep it simple and use common sense". Absurd.

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yamalight
Then you also don't need designers - you can just use common sense of taste
instead! Easy-peasy!

