{"id":15760,"date":"2022-04-21T10:47:55","date_gmt":"2022-04-21T10:47:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/uxmag.com\/?p=15760"},"modified":"2022-04-29T15:22:00","modified_gmt":"2022-04-29T15:22:00","slug":"ux-and-evangelism-undoing-whats-undoing-ux","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/uxmag.com\/articles\/ux-and-evangelism-undoing-whats-undoing-ux","title":{"rendered":"UX and Evangelism: Undoing What\u2019s Undoing UX"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

We need to say this out loud: CX and UX practitioners at all levels (even experts and managers) are hired into companies that don\u2019t understand what we do. We are then put on teams and projects where they don\u2019t understand what we do. Everybody else wants to do what we do\u2026 or what they think <\/em>UX is. They think our work is easy and anybody can do it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We wanted so badly for them to sit with us at lunch and play with us at recess that some people came out with books and models that took CX\/UX in the wrong direction. We supported and tried to use those, thinking that it would get everybody to care about \u201cdesign.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We wanted to evangelize UX. We didn\u2019t notice how weird that made us look. We didn\u2019t notice that zero other teammates are running meetings about how great they are, how important their tasks are, how they need to be a larger part of the process, etc. We didn\u2019t even seem to notice or care that our teammates hate being dragged into UX evangelism meetings. So much for our \u201cempathy.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We took off our critical thinking hats<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Some of us didn\u2019t realize how our own choices and actions might reinforce the misunderstandings around CX\/UX. We didn\u2019t imagine the outcomes of every book, model, and workshop that reinforces that \u201ceverybody can design the product.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We didn\u2019t notice that no other domain at our company holds workshops or exercises like we do\u2026 and how *not* workshopping is part of how they retain their power in their own domain.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Marketing doesn\u2019t hold days of workshopping around what should our email campaigns be. We would respect Marketing less if they interrupted our work to have us join in that. We\u2019d probably think they were somewhat incompetent and can\u2019t seem to do their work without stopping everybody else\u2019s work. They\u2019d seem codependent. Incapable. And they\u2019d send the message that anybody can do Marketing\u2019s work if we just all got together and took a stab at it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We thought that if we gave up our power, made everything a workshop, and \u201cdemocratized,\u201d people would care about design or respect us.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

You can\u2019t evangelize that UX is an important specialty and <\/em>then get everybody in a room to guess at what\u2019s supposed to be your work. <\/strong>You teach them that UX guesses at stuff, and can\u2019t even do that<\/em> themselves. You teach them that we need to stop everybody else\u2019s work so that we can do team exercises and group tasks and guesses. You teach them that if you can fill out some frameworks and canvasses, you are really caring about customers<\/em> and designing the product. You\u2019d never hang designs at your desk and ask people to vote on their favorite, but you run workshops where customers are barely involved, the problem is barely understood, and we vote on a \u201cwinning\u201d \u201csolution.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Without our critical thinking hats on, we didn\u2019t notice that no other domain at our company is a democracy<\/strong>. Engineering doesn\u2019t invite us to decide on the back-end architecture. QA doesn\u2019t ask what we think about their automated testing. Product doesn\u2019t want us to join a 3-day sticky note festival to come up with a prioritized product road map. They all collaborate where they want, but they mostly do their own work and make their own decisions. They keep their power and autonomy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When crappy books came out that ran mostly or completely against customer-centricity, we stayed quiet, and I don\u2019t know why considering that we are change agents, advocates, and mini lawyers<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Awful books came out saying that you don\u2019t really need UX and certainly not specialists; just get everybody into group exercises and team workshops so you can \u201cdemocratize\u201d UX and have everybody be a part of it. You\u2019ll surely show people the \u201cvalue of design\u201d by having everybody do workshop exercises. Figure out what customers want by releasing iterations of guesses and then surveying how they liked that.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

When non-startups wanted to design their product or \u201cinnovate\u201d by holding design sprints, we said nothing. Teams held workshops to design the product, sometimes without CX or UX, and we said nothing. Designing the product was supposed to be our job, but when they took it away from us to do \u201cdesign by committee\u201d workshops, the people writing the books and selling the training told us it would be good for us. And with critical thinking hats off, we believed that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When Engineering took over processes and organizations to be \u201cAgile,\u201d we said nothing. When they removed us from the process, we said nothing. After all, we\u2019re following this new Agile religion, it says you don\u2019t really need UX or just have an engineer read a UX book, and we said nothing. Just release something minimally viable, and learn after customers struggle with it if it\u2019s good or not.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

That was hard to fight since people at our companies were paying a lot to be trained and certified to put customers last while pretending to care about their satisfaction. I\u2019ll tell you later how our best bet is to shift away from evangelism and fight a battle on this front.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We press like and share on total bullshit that would be obvious if we kept critical thinking hats on and considered the possible outcomes<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I have watched a pseudo-guru out there push \u201ceverybody\u2019s a designer\u201d for years. He wants to come and train your company to reach his model\u2019s highest level of UX maturity, which is when everybody is \u201cfluent\u201d in UX design. We applauded him at events. We invited him back.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We didn\u2019t consider the possible outcomes if everybody at our company \u201cis a designer\u201d or believes they are \u201cfluent\u201d in UX design. We didn\u2019t consider the outcomes of \u201clet\u2019s teach our teammates to be better at our jobs.\u201d We didn\u2019t notice that none of our teammates are training us to be better at their jobs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Critical thinking hats on:<\/p>\n\n\n\n