Whose job is UX?

UX is imperative, that’s a given. With role definitions gaining more prominence & an increasing demand for granular clarity, the scope & purview of UX becomes absolutely quintessential.

UX - “Theory in Practice”

Talk to a random person on the street who would have something to do with the tech space, the odds are pretty strongly stacked in favor of one having encountered the word “UX” somewhere across one’s experience if one is not actively involved in doing specific work that’s already classified under UX of what could almost be a daily affair.

To even be able to take a first step towards that UX bandwagon one’d have to start with understanding the user’s needs thoroughly which is just another way to say the problems the users are facing / plaguing them from quite some time now sans any feasible solution in sight. Without that it’d just be like shooting in the dark.

So, once you have those problems established, the obvious next step is to see whether that aligns with your strategy & roadmap (and the reason I quote these action plans here is because UX is more of a thing correlative of the solution being built) both of which are an offshoot of the high-level business goals.

That done, you’d get into the core of defining the UX over planning all those individual components, individually with your internal teams a rough depiction of which you’d find here in the figure below, a large stake of which usually lies with the Design team.

Image Credits: Wikimedia

So, the “theoretical understanding” that’s usually an excerpt from some discussion or a session of idea exchange ought to be subject to some basic fact finding with an aim to discover something tangible, meaningful & workable which could be thought of as dependent & a result of some extensive research (UXR – User Experience Research) and a bout of experimentation leading to string of learnings which ought to form a solid backbone for all those ideas, thoughts, discussions, iterations, incremental improvements thereof culminating in a workable, appreciable, lovable design so as to go a full circle over “putting that understanding into practice”.

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Mental Models

Jakob Nielsen from NNG back in the 1990s framed the ground rules what are known commonly as Mental Models today which stand representative to the user’s beliefs about a particular system and that could span the look and feel of a Website / Web or Mobile App / Physical product.

The reason this model fits in with the world today as well is because of the depth it goes to in covering aspects stage-wise, from the start right up to such time that it could lead to establishing success.

Here is a depiction of one such Mental Models that talks about the “preparation one would have to go through to take an entrance exam like say CAT (Common Aptitude Test” – an exam that’s taken by aspirants to get into India’s best B-schools and is touted as the toughest, given the competition & other contributing factors like time limits, scoring patterns one would have to align with).

And, the application of that mental model is no different from any product one would encounter in the world today. But, when one talks about products in general there is a major influence that the user’s perception plays which could be gained from dealing with the other products in the market and perhaps what’d be standards that are set and followed by the other organizations.

Jakob’s Law of the Internet User Experience states:

“Users spend most of their time on websites other than yours, thus a big part of customers’ mental models of your site will be influenced by information gleaned from other sites”.

A derivative of that & evolution of it as applicable to today’s world of products would be:

“If your competition has set the bar high, you only have one choice left which is to first set that as your basic expectation, meet it & scale heights thereof”.

Mental models more often than not transform into what’d be known as expectations and if you are planning on that mega product / feature release here’s a heads-up. You’d rather employ a whole brand of research to understand what the market is doing right now & where it is headed so as to factor that into building and offering only the best experience for your users (UX).

But here’s a question!

Given any organizational set-up, who does really takes care of the UX part?

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Whose job is UX?

The common perception is to correlate and interlink the term “UX” to “Design Team” or “Designers” and there indeed is a lot of truth to that and there is also no denying that for a fact.

Now, here is a STRAWMAN argument, of what could be an alternate perspective:

“UX is not the whole and sole responsibility of the Designer / a Design team per se, but it indeed is a collective responsibility of all the internal solutioning teams (UXR, Design, Development, Product) and requires an equal share of work contribution in delivering”.

NOTE: In case you’d want to know more about the STRAWMAN specifically wrt Surveys & the bias here’s a link that’d help:

Strawman & Steelman

Let’s see how we can break that Strawman down now:

Case Study (Illustration)

Here’s a small illustration that was shared with me over a conversation on Mastodon social.

Here’s the link to it: https://mastodon.social/@PavelASamsonov/109552295628736155

Mickey @GameWithTurik

@RobDenBleyker I discovered, for some reason, GrubHub defaults my local Wendy's burgers to no ingredients unless you ask for them. which meant when i said "add ketchup and mayo" they delivered a box with only ketchup and mayo in it.

• What do you think happened to the user & his relationship after he came to terms with paying $17.31 for the ketchup & mayo?

• Isn’t that very obvious!?

Very clearly, this issue has to do with the lack of understanding or research in a given space before beginning to build for it. Also, in this case, one prominent thing to note is, the users existed before your App, the businesses building those food products did also clearly exist before the App was made. So, the product teams who envisioned the App had the additional job of fitting into an existing workflow and there was never going to be an excuse for not thinking of all these factors that form an integral part of contribution towards a “great UX”.

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Elements of a Great UX

Now that we understand the importance, let’s talk of the elements that contribute to a great UX.

Here’s is a generic list:

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Recommendations (Further readings)

Thinking beyond UX you’d certainly need to show some concern over your brand & try to get your <org. name> closely associated or symbolic to your expertise / “THE Problem” your product solves for (or) “THE” service that is your USP / sets you apart.

Here’s a snippet I’d recommend irrespective of the size of team you are handling as a leader / size of an org. you are running as a Cofounder.

Want to Build Your Brand's Expertise? Then Do This ...