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One of the things I find about UX Designers (including myself) is the tendency to jump straight to the most complicated, costly and time consuming solution, when there are mush simpler and easier solution you could try first.
I’m not saying that’s the wrong thing to do. Logically it’s often the right thing to do, especially silly if the goal is to minimise errors and maximise the chance if success.
However this approach is often super frustrating to other parts of the business, especially when they believe they have an obvious quick win. “Why don’t we just copy what big competitor A does?”
This will invariably start a big (fun) logical argument about how we’re not big competitor A, and our customers aren’t the same. We may use examples of when Bestbuy (I think it was them) used the Amazon platform but nobody left reviews because Bestbuy isn’t Amazon.
However these logical arguments almost always fail, and leave post parties feeling frustrated. Perfect is the event of good and all that.
So rather than getting into opinion battles that you’ll never win (but can walk away from feeling smug and self satisfied that you know deep down you were right) how about taking a different approach and laddering folks up.
Try the obvious/easy solution first. It probably won’t take a tonne of time. If it works, then great. If not, you already know what you’ll do to fix it.
If designers what to get better at understanding business, you need to learn that most business people don’t want the perfect solution, they want the least objectionable and costly solution they can implement right away.
If the problem you are facing is loosing them money, they want to stem the flow straight away. So they’ll be happier with a solution you have 80% confidence in that you can try straight away, over a perfect solution you can deliver in 6 months.
The bonus is that if you can actually stem the problem straight away, you’ll build trust and there’s much more likelihood that you’ll get the permission to solve the bigger problem.
It often feels like UX designers are firefighters, who think they’re fire safety experts. While they’re debating the best way to prevent future fires, the home owners are starring at a burning building wondering why nobody has got their hoses out (not a euphemism).
I should add that I LOVE UX Designers (and UX focussed Product Managers), but god can we over analyse and over complicate things.
In order to make the complex simple for our users, we have the tendency of making the simple complex for everybody else we work with.
This makes total sense (why should our users take the hit). However sometimes we need to be pragmatic and walk the middle ground.
This makes total sense (why should our users take the hit). However sometimes we need to be pragmatic and walk the middle ground.
Otherwise we become the people in our organisations who are always argumentative, who always say no (and we know that’s the job of developers) and who become perceived as blockers, to the point that folks start looking for other ways around.
