Five things we wish we knew about working as a UX designer before we started

It might sound a bit strange, but when working as a UX designer, everything doesn’t revolve around the needs of the users. We know. Mind-blowing, right? The needs of the client are often equally as important – whether they need to make money, have a social mission, or need to implement changes due to new laws and regulations. This means that we, as designers, might have to think “how can we, with these business needs, design for good user experiences?”.

When we started working as designers, we noticed how our colleagues were talking about politics. We eventually understood this referred to the power dynamics between various stakeholders in the organization in which you work. Figuring out what responsibilities these stakeholders have, how their success is measured, and what engages them is an important part of understanding the needs of the client. Understanding the stakeholders will help you gain a position in which you can execute your design. If you’re not in the position to execute your design, making an impact can be difficult – regardless of knowledge or skill.

“But how do I prepare for this?”, you may ask. Our best tip is simply to be aware of this insight when you start working. Look out for the different stakeholders, their needs, decision-making powers, what defines their success, and what engages them. Then, as with many things in life, you learn as you go!

In the traditional design process that we were taught, a designer figures out how the product should work, perhaps by conducting interviews and surveys. Then he or she starts designing a prototype to hand over to the developers. One shortcoming of ending the design process after design handoff is that many insights await after a product is launched. Continuously learning and adjusting a design is called continuous design. Here are three ways of working with continuous design that we've tried out:

Hotjar is a tool that can be integrated into your product to learn more about users' behavior. Among other things, you can create heatmaps of where users click, scroll or move their cursor to learn which functionality is used the most, find out what piece of information is the most popular, and so on. This can help you design for better user experiences by prioritizing which information to show in a particular place. Hotjar also records how users navigate your product, making you able to see how real users interact with the product.

Getting feedback on ideas and gathering insights is essential when designing. That’s probably why conducting interviews or surveys are popular ways to find out if you’re on the right track. We encourage you to continue questioning users also after the initial design is released. By doing this you can receive feedback on how users reacted to the change and how it affected their task. This can lead you to continuously making adjustments to your design.

You can create a “fake door” by implementing a button or a tiny bit of functionality to gain the users' attention. When the user clicks the button it is explained how the functionality isn’t done yet. They are also presented with a small questionnaire asking about what they would like to see or which functionality that would be relevant to them. This may result in feedback on the concept before it’s fully implemented.

At school, we often worked in groups of designers. This is a fun and educational form of learning. What we found through our recent months of working is that including developers can also yield several benefits that you should be aware of.

Involving developers in your design process can provide the technical insight needed to make sure your designs are technically feasible. As team members, they are also invested in the product and can provide valuable feedback. When developers are included in your design research process, they can be your allies and share an understanding of why certain features are more important than others. This is of course a vital part of working in a team. You can also find out what each developer is interested in. Maybe one of your developer colleagues wants to learn how to make animations or another would like to focus on software architecture. Knowing this allows you to tailor tasks according to your team and thus working with their strengths and interests.

Sketches are simple drawings, usually drawn by hand, used to explore product ideas in the early stages of the design process. They are known for being useful because they are quick and easy to make and communicates your idea without costing too much time and effort. While this is very true, we find the real value of sketches to be as a tool for communication. When talking with various stakeholders that are part of the product development process it is easy to assume that there exists a mutual understanding. However, as we designers know, everyone can have different mental models. Having rough sketches in front of everyone or making them on-the-fly in the meeting (sounds intimidating, but is so useful) ensures that everyone is more likely to be on the same page. If a developer is present too, it can help uncover unknown technical complexities that you were unaware of. The sketches can then be used to talk about technical complications and how you might solve or work around them (yet another example of why developers should be included in the design process).

A short and concise tip from us and many other designers in Bekk is to write lists! As we're sure you can gather from everything we have written about until now, a designer's role is multi-faceted and includes staying on top of many things at once. Having a way to keep track of decisions being made, tasks to do, people to talk to, and meetings to attend will not only help you remember everything you have to do, but will also show you everything you have achieved! Sometimes, if you have had a day full of meetings, it can feel as if you haven’t done much work. By looking at your list you can see all the meetings you have attended, people you have talked to, and decisions that have been made: all important aspects of the work.

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These are five different topics that we have learned a lot about during our first four months as UX-designers. Had we known this before, starting our careers might have been a tad easier. But what’s life without a challenge, eh?

* We also believe that including business developers in your design process is highly valuable, but that's a topic for another time.