The User Experience Team of One. Leah Buley

Guerilla User Research” method (Chapter 6) is a great starting place.

Start Designing

      It’s a funny fact of user experience work that people expect that you’re going to produce designs that are just undeniably better. Lovelier. Simpler. More intuitive. You know, better. And you certainly don’t want to disappoint them. The challenge is that many of us come to this field by other routes, and don’t have formal design backgrounds. As a result, it’s not uncommon for a team of one to find himself or herself in a position of defending a design without necessarily believing or knowing with 100 percent conviction that it is, in fact, a better design. The challenge for user experience professionals is to understand user needs well enough to look past the prosaic solutions to discover the elegant ones (see Figure 2.11).

FIGURE 2.11 Sometimes the right user experience solution can be deceptive. While this giant remote may solve one problem (visibility and motor control when using a TV remote), it may also introduce other ones (the awkwardness of handling a remote the size of a TV dinner tray, perhaps).

      In fact, for many of us, our first taste of design is through a software tool that makes laying out a page easy, but doesn’t necessarily teach us anything about how people encounter and make sense of features and information in an interactive medium. While it’s tempting to throw yourself into the software and get lost in the satisfying process of laying out a page, that’s not necessarily the best way to ensure that designs are being developed that successfully balance user expectations, business expectations, and team expectations. This is where many of the tools of classically trained designers can come in handy for UX folks—in particular, sketching, critique, iterative improvement, and seeking inspiration from the world around you. Here’s how you can bring these techniques into your work as a team of one:

      • Sketch your ideas. The simplest and most beautiful designs are seldom born that way (see Figure 2.12). It takes a lot of work to make something simple. That process often starts with sketches and back-of-the-napkin inspiration, and evolves over time as you iterate, refine, and mold your ideas into increasingly higher fidelity. Chapter 7 provides a range of methods that you can use to guide yourself and your team through the sketching process.

FIGURE 2.12 Paradoxically, beautiful designs often start in an unattractive place, as mere sketches on paper or scribbles on a whiteboard.

      • Enlist colleagues to generate design ideas. Host activities that invite others to participate in the design process (see Figure 2.13). See Chapter 7 for a variety of techniques for planning and hosting such sessions—especially “Sketchboards,” which are tailor-made for this purpose. Figure 2.13 shows what a successful cross-functional collaboration between a UX team of one and her team should look like: lots of sketches and visual artifacts, and lots of notes as a record of the conversation.

FIGURE 2.13 An example of a completed sketchboard, explained in further detail in Chapter 7.

      • Learn from other successful products. Create inspiration libraries to keep abreast of current standards and have a place to turn for multiple ideas when working on a new problem (see Figure 2.14). But also question things. Spend time asking yourself “What makes a particular design work?” Equally importantly, when something doesn’t work, see if you can pinpoint why. You might even go so far as to practice verbalizing these thoughts (either to a friend, or to your mirror, if you’d prefer). Being confident in the language of critique is one hallmark of a strong designer, and it goes a long way in helping nondesigners understand objectively what works and what doesn’t in an otherwise subjective medium.

      

FIGURE 2.14 An inspiration library can be as simple as a folder where you keep screenshots of designs you’ve encountered that are notable, either for being good or bad.

If You Only Do One Thing...

      This chapter covers the building blocks of any UX practice. First, establish a point of view on where to start. Then figure out a sensible process with an appropriate balance between user research and design. However, the most important concept here—and indeed, the most important concept in the whole field—is to actually talk to users.

      So if you only have time to do one thing from this chapter, focus on getting started with user research. Usually, even a little bit of time spent investigating the needs and realities of users will lead to “ah-has” so important and obvious that they will create their own momentum to get you started.

       A Typical UX Team of One Job Description

      If you happen to be in the job market, it can be helpful to know how to spot a UX team-of-one situation. Few UX jobs are advertised as a team-of-one gig, but there are usually telltale signs that give them away. Figure 2.15 shows a job description that is adapted from several real jobs posted to a popular UX job board.

FIGURE 2.15 This is, in many ways, a standard UX team-of-one job description. This employer shows a clear awareness that user experience is essential in creating a competitive product, but the employer might not know how it will integrate with the company’s existing way of working.

      This job description shows an employer who is looking for someone who can drastically improve the quality of the user experience. The product will be “elegant,” reduced to the “bare essentials,” and “beautiful.” People may not say it directly, but there’s usually an expectation that having someone who will focus on UX will result in changes to the product that will immediately wow everyone. This can be a tricky expectation to manage, since design improvements often happen gradually, over time. The design methods in Chapter 7 show you how you can improve the quality of the product and bring people along with you in the process.

      What you also see in this job description is a common challenge that UX teams of one face—employers are often confused about the relationship between visual design and user experience design. This may point to a lack of awareness about the processes and people involved in user experience work. Some user experience professionals do include graphic design in their arsenal of tools, but many do not. You can still be a user experience designer even if you just stop at wireframes, but user experience generalists—which most teams of one are—are sometimes called upon to do a bit of visual design as well. To get a sense of what your colleagues do and don’t know about user experience, take them out to lunch and have a casual conversation. Consider a “