DU059 - Can UX Specialists exist after Coronavirus?

Introduction

0:00hello and welcome to design untangled with me chris mears and carla lindate hello hello hello how you doing yep good it's been a while since we spoke i think the last time was right at the beginning of lockdown it's like big brother and it's like dear 45 in the big brother

0:34house carla's cut liam's hair with a pair of dog clippers oh no this lockdown is just making everyone look so horrible i know my haircut's so bad it's done with a beard trimmer but the shaved head is quite good satisfying to rub so if you need a little stress ball throughout the day you've got your own heads just to have a have a little rub down on well liam was a bit optimistic and he wanted me to do his like proper haircut but it just looked like

1:09i put like a bowl on his head and cut everything else it was so funny that's what they used to do in the 90s i know that's what my brother used to have like a coconut you know you put around um but then it just i had very bad seasons so we bought a professional kit now and um professional dog grooming kit well what else can you do um as i said as long as you know people in zoom calls can see you and

1:44they don't laugh it's fine i don't see anyone so i don't care about my terrible hair at the moment yeah i haven't seen anyone for a long time now i look like a proper mom who's given up i've stopped like even i stopped even like caring about what to wear i just weren't you know a pleasure yeah oh no i wish it was like that it's just like you know massive tracksuit bottoms

Lockdown Life

2:10and how have you been entertaining yourself during lockdown uh really well like apart from um changing nappies feeding babies putting babies to sleep entertaining babies i don't do anything i thought you only had one baby oh yes only one but just feels like 10 it's really hard it's also very heavy now so it's like hurting my wrists i have to go to bed with splains in my wrists because they hurt so much

2:41yeah you're probably seeing 10 from all the gin you're drinking as well no i don't i drink whiskey not gin anyway um design design feels like a very like you know stuff they used to do very long time ago and it's been six months almost six months of maternity leave so maybe that's why i've had about four months of just not having a job i haven't got a baby as an excuse

3:12because my last gig ended basically i think it was more or less a week after we recorded the last episode so essentially the start of lockdown and needless to say the job market has not been particularly buoyant since that point so i've just been amusing myself in the garden growing loads of vegetables that i don't even like so i've got about six tomato plants that are just fruiting like thousands of fucking tomatoes man i won't eat any of them yeah there's lots

3:43oh i love tomatoes okay i'll send you a few got chard growing as well i don't even know what to do with chard got some runner beans yeah i've just got all kinds of shit and like the only thing i'll eat will probably be the chilies so i'm looking forward to those oh that's good well that keeps

Specialism in Design

4:01you busy yep it does indeed so what we wanted to talk about today then was specialism and i've kind of inspired on this topic due to the current job market um which seems to be going heavily towards product designers and you could argue that the job market's been going that way for a while but in terms of the very few companies that actually are picking up their hiring again now it is very high percentage of just product designers and i thought it'd be interesting to explore why that might be

4:34um you'd normally see a bit more of a mix of you know ux designers um and researchers and stuff like that but i think companies are definitely trying to probably get one person that can do all of that for you know obviously it's hard times at the minute so there's cost savings of just having one person rather than splitting it out but it'd be interesting for us to chat about what could some of the risks of that be what are the potential downsides um our company is basically creating problems further down the road maybe as well yeah it's interesting isn't it because as you said it was

5:10a trend that was happening anyway but this thing kind of accelerated that trend and now everyone is like hiring product designers i don't know i remember before i would say the two three years before would we call those people like unicorns right people who can do a bit of everything and i remember myself saying i don't think that is right because you need specialisms you need you know people who can specialize in ux and do all the definition and then the research which is very highly like um special

5:43specialized specialism that's the way um but and then you visual design or ui design you can you know do the the visual part and now i don't know i think i think one of the reasons why this is happening is because i think a lot of things especially in ui design has been very um how do you say that it's standardized it's standardized yeah like everything is the same like you could tell

6:14obviously some apps or websites would have this feature that feature but everything is just the same thing it's just this you know component design and and i think because now prototyping tools are much better and easier to you know replicate and change colors and change you know you change what button in one place and it changes everywhere else etc so i think that's also made the whole job of ux ui design easier and so that's why i think one person could do that job it doesn't necessarily mean that's the same

6:50quality but it is possible isn't it yeah i think that there's definitely been big time savings in the ui and prototyping end of the the ux spectrum i suppose where i would question that is at the start of the journey so the the research and discovery phase i think the way product teams are set up now and the way lots of them are starting to work particularly at the minute companies are kind of in delivery mode and i'm not convinced that there's enough focus being given to research at least not

7:24discovery kind of research and generative research it's all just being focused on you know usability style stuff obviously in the current situation you have to rely a lot on remote tools remote research tools they lend themselves well to that kind of testing but less well to stuff where you actually need to sit with people in their own context and uncover what those needs and tasks they might need to do are it i think that's that's the thing isn't it also because i remember like from before you would have ux designers doing research as well but now you have researchers doing research and then it's

8:02kind of like the all the bits that ux designers we used to do kind of started being part of other disciplines um and there's not like such thing as a ux standard as it used to be before i think it's more like a designer and that's why you know this concept of product designers and it's actually funny because recently i was talking to a friend whose um her husband is a product designer but an actual product designer like he designs physical products and um he was saying that the fact that everyone in

8:36digital now is calling themselves product designers has been very detrimental of actual product designers because they like if they go for a job that they don't know what jobs they should be applying for anymore because it's kind of like um everyone is a designer everyone is a product designer right now even though they haven't really designed a physical product before so it's it's kind of like changing a lot of areas of design and i guess now more than ever like digital design is so important

9:06and um and then being able to do you know everything for one person is like what you know companies are looking for yeah and i wonder as well like the title implies you're building for a particular product obviously so that's like an app or a website or whatever so it doesn't necessarily touch like all touch points as much as it should i think you're very focused in your product team on you know we are the app team or whatever this is what we're we're looking at and it's difficult to get that holistic

9:39kind of view of the entire service i suppose and that's where things like research and potentially specialisms can fill in the gaps i don't think currently within a sprint which is how many places are working you're going to be able to do robust enough research to sort of think about that um you're going to have very limited sort of thinking time as well if you're one person doing you know you've got to do all the strategy you've got to do all the prototyping for the research you've got to digest

10:10those research findings effectively you've got to it's like iterate your designs incorporating those things so it is a big ask of one person i think i'm sure there are people that can do it and can do it very well but if you split those roles out and there is the actual scope to explore those different areas properly i think you're probably going to get a better product it's just a question of time and resource right usually yeah definitely especially and as you said before in this in the current situation um companies will be looking to save money so i guess they would go for you know

10:45someone who can do a bit of everything uh and just save on on that yeah but that's as you said i think that's just just making design very samey like everything is just looks the same like obviously we talk about from um ux and research perspective and strategy but from a visual perspective as well like you can have people who have traditionally done ux design only like kind of get it into visual and if they don't have the training or the experience or the skills like everything just ends up looking like a

11:19you know stencil everything like it's all very very plain and um not necessarily like talking about you know explaining or showcasing the brand so that's another area like obviously ux designers are being impacted by this but at the same time you know visual and ui designers who specialize in that area are now um you know asked to do more on the ux side as well um and vice versa so it's a bit of a

11:51risk as you said but it's totally understandable with um you know today's situation it's also like i i i guess there's a lot of work or well maybe i'm being naive but i think there will be more work around you know existing businesses trying to get some e-commerce up and running um and a lot of that stuff like if you work for a big company i guess they already have their own branding you know their own website and they just need like kind of basically people to help push things through

12:26um and deliver important features to get people to be able to shop online um i've seen a lot of businesses like small ones medium-sized businesses like getting on e-commerce as quickly as they can and i guess if someone is hiring is basically especially in a digital space is to make sure that they have an online presence that is decent and allows customers to buy or you know services online um so i guess i would try to kind of showcase that a little bit more depending on the jobs that

13:00you're you're looking for but just how you help businesses um you know implement this you know kind of solutions digital solutions quite quickly um because i think that's what people need and you know speed at the moment just to be able to be relevant because you know if you know you don't have website at the moment you you'll be you'll be really bad in a bad situation yeah and it's a it is that case of you know the tactical and strategic stuff right tactically you might need to just get

13:33stuff out there otherwise you know your doors won't be opening the next day but you have to think about how you can balance that with the longer term view how you can raise the profile of design and ux so that in future maybe the company would potentially considering hiring a specialist researcher or specialist ux whatever it is the more people you have to dissect problems very often you know if they're specialized in one particular area they can bring you know new viewpoints and stuff that you wouldn't potentially

14:03have time to consider just because you're rolling out features you know sprint after sprint and there isn't that time to step back and look at stuff more holistically yeah definitely i mean and and as you mentioned before um businesses at the moment should not be thinking just about that tactical stuff it should be especially now a lot of people have to reinvent have reinvented their businesses how they can actually make money in a different way um how can they provide different services they never thought

14:37they could offer um or you know partnerships etc so i think the strategic thinking is actually very important it's just that obviously the depression of the day-to-day and the pressure of like we have to keep doing what we're doing is kind of pushing businesses to focus on more tactical stuff and not investing much on um research and like strategic thinking but if you think about it this is the time to start researching and understanding an audience and a behavior that we haven't had you know in this in

15:10in this time so um i think it's it is actually super important for businesses right now to focus at least some of their resources to rethink their businesses and see you know if this is going to continue how they're going to survive um if they can't get people in the shops or they can't get like face to face um you know if we talk about like big events or things you know these businesses that rely on social interaction how can they rethink that and i think research and strategy is it has to be at the at the

15:46of the core of that yeah so if you are a product designer living through hell potentially at the moment

Advice for Product Designers

15:52what kinds of things do you think you can do if your company has not gone in the direction of hiring kind of separate ui people and research um should you do anything i mean you could make the argument that product teams have moved beyond that specialism stuff at this point and they just want particularly startups they need to show their investors stuff and these specialists are potentially seen as slowing things down or not working towards that goal yeah so i think i guess people should be doing stuff and

16:24should be trying as you said like in the in their day-to-day of course they need to turn things quickly and you know design quickly but at the same time just having those breathing spaces to to you to allow some more like generative research and allow some more thinking and brainstorming and just making sure that you know designers can can or try to do as much as they can to not lose um side of

16:56you know what the future should be for that particular product and because then you get you can get really really busy and distracted by the day-to-day of turning like assets um and i guess at the lack of other specialists around you um i would say try to bring bring in in your own you know in your own time um practices on of like researching like asking what customers are looking for even if it's a small scale it's always important and i think more and more i think designers should be learning more about business

17:33as well like what what what you know what they're doing how that impact their business and and you know reading more about business and like learning more about how business work and how you actually make money because we've been you know for many years focus on experience which i think is is great but at the same time we especially now when resources are so um so small like you have to really show value and the value of design could apply to anything especially businesses so i think there's a lot of work that

18:06we need to be doing in that area as well yeah and i think that's why the title product designer is a bit problematic because it ties all your design efforts to that single product that you're focusing on as opposed to how you might design the organization or other experiences around that product so yeah i would encourage you not to just focus on your your day-to-day stuff where you do have the opportunity take a step back see what other things you can do to broaden i suppose the organizational knowledge

18:39and research as well i have heard lots of startups it research is essentially just a checkbox exercise to see if people can get through a particular screen flow um you really need to be thinking wider than that um research is a very valuable tool both for giving you ideas for potential design solutions but also different ways of even thinking about a design problem in the first place so do have a think about different ways you can explore that um yeah i guess just up skill as well on some of the other the other areas

19:16like carla says business strategy it's always a good one yeah anything you can learn about research as well well okay well good luck i hope you get a job soon otherwise this podcast will be my sole source of income and at the minute it brings in zero dollars oh god now things are picking up again i'm sure you'll find something soon cool well i'll um send you those tomatoes we're gonna try and get back in the swing of things a bit i know we've been a bit

19:50all over the place with our schedule but we're gonna try and get back into the regular two-week vibe yeah um so yeah we got a lot of exciting stuff planned for the next few months so hopefully you can tune in if you do enjoy the podcast no at least some people must do and then please share it with a friend as well that helps us kind of grow which is always nice and if you have any ideas questions or even like feedback telling us that we are very bad just let us know

20:21all right um i'm really tired i should go to bed soon or i should have another whiskey yeah have another whiskey all right see you next time see you bye search and subscribe to design untangled using your favorite podcast app and leave us a review follow us on the web at design untangled.co.uk or on twitter at design untangled become a better designer with online mentoring at uxmentor.me

20:56you