Balance - UX Secret Sauce
Do you ever feel frustrated during UX discussions? It can be quite challenging. That's why this Secret Sauce is here to help you explore some ways to achieve success. Let's dive in!
To start, let's explore ways to be open to new and different suggestions. This involves being flexible, balanced, and a good listener.
Try to listen, receive, and understand the user and any feedback.
It's called "understand" because it's about getting below your ego (under) to be able to receive others' points of view.
All inputs should not come from what we think or what we feel about it. Let go of your ego to build good products with all stakeholders!
Keep your thoughts and feelings balanced without any biased sides.
To start putting things in actions, here are some steps to help getting more balanced:
1. Ask for Help
Sometimes our ego prevents us from asking for help. We keep digging, searching, and putting in a huge effort to fix things ourselves because Many of us believe that asking for help is a sign of weakness or failure.
However, asking for help is a great opportunity to take a shortcut, get the best results, save time and effort, and get straight to the point.
One of the great benefits of asking for help is discussion with more experienced people in the field.
They may offer wider insights on the situation, and communication and networking will always work in our favor and teach us more than we expect!
2. Ask questions
Children always ask questions because they do not understand how life works, and the first word they learn is "why." As UX professionals, we should embrace this childlike curiosity and continuously ask "why."
This approach helps us understand why we make certain design decisions, such as color choices, layouts, elements, and illustrations. By doing so, we avoid making arbitrary decisions without any logic or justification.
Moreover, asking questions is crucial for gathering information about user needs and business requirements. By understanding why users cannot interact with a product and why stakeholders want it a certain way, we can address the real issue behind it and find the best solution.
3. Recognize Your Mistakes
One important aspect of being balanced in UX is accepting our mistakes, acknowledging that we might fail, and recognizing that we are not perfect. We create prototypes and sketches before creating the visuals because our main goal is to fail freely, without being afraid to rework.
When we do fail, we should acknowledge it, embrace it, recognize it, admit it, and learn from it.
Hiding our failures won't help us move forward, learn, change, or grow. It will only feed our ego!
Remember, failure is a natural part of the learning process, and it's okay to make mistakes as long as we learn from them and use them to grow.
4. Value the Opinion of Others
Sometimes, we test the waters before launching or publishing our work to ensure it looks good and works properly. Other times, our clients provide negative feedback, or our colleagues offer insights after seeing our work.
These are all perfect examples of how to enhance and improve our output.
However, if we don't actively listen and understand the feedback and insights, it will be a waste of time and effort!
Active listening is crucial to adding value to your work and ensuring its success.
Therefore, it's important to take the time to listen and comprehend the feedback provided by others, rather than simply hearing their voices in your ear.
5. Embrace Criticism
Some people are blunt or straightforward and don't know how to sugarcoat their words. They say what they feel about it in an ugly way.
The point here is to respect their opinion without taking it personally. It's not about you!
Remember the goal is about your design and output.
Stay humble, keep listening, and disconnect yourself from the feedback. Filter it and take the meaning behind it.
We can't control how others express themselves, but we can control how we perceive it and how we can make good use of it!
Take Away
Keep your Balance, stay humble and drop your ego. Be open to new suggestions, ask for help, ask questions, and acknowledge your mistakes. Value the opinions of others and be receptive to unexpected feedback. By letting go of your ego and being a good listener, you can build better products and work effectively with others.
About the UX Secret Sauce
"The UX Secret Sauce" is a series of stories, where each story reveals a secret to conquer a unique challenge. However, the challenges I share in these series are different from the typical technical UX challenges.
Lately, I have read numerous articles and posts about UX. I have noticed that most of the shared knowledge is focused on technical aspects such as tools, implementation, principles, and guidelines.
Throughout my career, I have met many UX designers who were highly skilled technically but lacked an important skill that is often overlooked: the "how" - the mechanism, dynamics, and operations. I call this skill the UX Secret Sauce, as it is rarely worked on and often hidden.
So, I have decided to share my knowledge about this secret. Let's start digging into the UX Secret Sauce - the hidden key to a successful UX career and the secret to stand out from the crowd!
There are many secrets, and this is one of UX Secret Sauce: Explore.
Stay tuned for the next secret!
Thank you for reading!
I hope you found this helpful. If you have any questions or feedback, please don’t hesitate to reach out. randavictor.com
Balance — UX Secret Sauce Randa Victor | July 2023