Having empathy

UX wouldn’t exist without empathy. In UX, users are at the centre of everything we do. From empathising with a user’s motivations to knowing why they use a product in a certain way, a UX designer’s objective is to make sure that the product is useful for their users. This means truly understanding the end customer. Don’t, however, go chasing after clients like Tom Cruise did in Jerry Maguire. He kinda had the right idea but fell short in execution.

If UX designers didn’t understand a user’s real context, we’d just be making decisions from an air-conditioned room without a real grasp of the real situation. To ensure that we truly know what our users go through, we conduct ethnographic studies by experiencing the real contexts in which our users use the product.

Once, on a Stampede Oil & Gas project, we shadowed workers in an oil refinery over their 12 hour shift. We learned that we had to take into account the long and exhausting hours, hot conditions and clunky equipment. Would we have had any idea of what it was like without literally stepping into their boots? Probably not. But because we took the right steps to empathise with the plant workers’ unique challenges, we gained significant insights that informed our work.

Emotional intelligence

I’m sure you know a couple of people who magically know when you’re feeling rotten and how to make you feel better. Those friends probably have some kick-butt EQ. Having good or high Emotional Quotient (EQ), a.k.a. emotional intelligence, is useful for navigating relationships with people from different backgrounds, industries and roles.

Being able to quickly parse a person’s drives and concerns allows you to adjust your approach to them accordingly thus optimising your interactions with them. This becomes increasingly important the further you go up the UX totem pole as managers need to organise their clients and teams.

Besides the obvious benefits in day-to-day work relations, UX practitioners with high EQ can glean the truth by reading between the lines of what users’ may actually mean as opposed to what they say. This is especially useful during usability tests and user interviews where the interviewer has to dig for proverbial gold from users. Similarly, by sensing the general mood of the interviewee, the UX designer can control the flow of the conversation to unearth more insights.

Ability to articulate

Ever wondered how some people are just so good at explaining really hazy and confusing concepts? Just a little secret, it takes a lot of practice and plenty of linguistic elbow grease. UX can seem mysterious simply because it’s a broad category. The subjects it covers ranges from how a product makes you feel to the change in ROI when a button’s colour is updated. It’s therefore the job of the designer to explain these abstract concepts to the clients or workshop participants in understandable terms.

Designers also need to be able to weave together disparate narratives from multiple sources to create a coherent story. This goes hand-in-hand with articulating what a client is trying to express. Here, from the input of the clients, experts and workshop participants, the designer has to tease out information and identify where and what the pain points and opportunities.

Persuasive

Us UX designers are a charming bunch! We constantly use our persuasive [hypnotic] powers to evoke the right emotional experience and encourage users to complete specific objectives. From the business side, getting buy-in from relevant stakeholders is paramount.

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When proposing a solution, designers need to make sure they’re solving the stakeholders’ problems while communicating the benefits and risks clearly. The ability to effectively repesent both the business and user interests is important to win stakeholder’s support. Doing this for different parties means speaking their language to keep the whole team focused on the end goal. It’s not always easy to tap dance your way through the Minefield of Differing Opinions™ but this is why a designer has to be persuasive enough to keep everyone onboard and on-track. This special ability especially will go a long way in cross-functional teams.

Persuasion doesn’t just stop at stakeholder management. Designers use persuasive design constantly to nudge users to stay motivated and complete their goals. Techniques such as progressive disclosure and some aspects of gamification work to encourage long-term engagement and the formation of habits as is often the case with e-commerce and health insurance.

Humility

In today’s culture that fetishises egocentricity, it’s easy to forget the importance of humility. This especially applies to UX designers who shouldn’t breeze in as experts shooting off design thinking sound bites. It’s usually the client or the business who are the experts as they’re the ones who have been working in the industry and on the product.

My role as a UX strategist, especially during workshops and design sprints, is to listen keenly and steer the conversation rather than dominate it. Designers bring a fresh perspective and reframe the questions and potential solutions after parsing the input from various parties. This enables us to facilitate discussions and only step out when necessary to highlight important elements.

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Now, as you probably noticed, a lot of these skills aren’t mutually exclusive. Emotional intelligence and empathy form the foundational soft skills upon which being articulate, persuasive and humble are built. Because UX as a field is constantly evolving and follows in the wake of technological developments, it’s more important for aspiring UX designers to have the right attitude and soft skills rather than technical know-how as those can often only be developed over time. At least at first, UX designers need to tap into their soft skills and get used to wiggling their toes in other people’s shoes.

By the way, we’re hiring UI/UX designers! Check out the job description here. The application deadline is Friday 30 November 2018.

The post People Smarts: 5 Essential Soft Skills for UX Designers appeared first on Stampede: the strategic design & technology company.

Two things came to mind: one, is that you will not get good overnight — and knowing the fast-paced tech industry, even if you have mastered one skill, you should be able to learn new things as it progresses.

Which brings to the second point: I wish I had known that while technical skills are important, I felt I should invest more on adaptable skills such as critical thinking, strategic thinking and writing.

Why writing?

When I started writing for corporate, I was told that writing is easy. So I pretty much walked in for the job with that same mindset in mind. I thought personal blogging would prepare me tremendously for the job, and boy I was so wrong. 

When you write for your personal blog, you give less attention to your audience because you pretty much write for and about yourself. However, when you write for someone else in mind, you need to be mindful of who they are, what roles they have, what nuances are better suited for them — the list goes on. 

Furthermore, I learned how to structure my writing and vary my pace accordingly so the audience will be engaged and not get bored in the process.

Something, like below.

Now that I have ventured into tech and UX, writing gets much more challenging.

What does writing have got to do with UX?

If you notice, a large chunk of user experience is delivered through written messages. Think about the time when you are tickled pink by a funny copy on a 404 page, or being overwhelmed trying to contact several houses on Airbnb, or maybe something as routine as trying to find the most appropriate emoji to reply to Tony’s Slack message (OK, maybe just us for this one!)

No emoji? When Slack can’t find an emoji that matches your search, it shows a crying emoji in response.

Like traditional writing, all of the above mentioned are written with an audience in mind. The modus operandi is the same — find out who you will be designing and writing for, do user research, strategise, design, develop, test and launch! 

Traditional writing is often accompanied by content planning. The same goes to UX writing. It is often accompanied and informed by content strategy. UX design and writing will also consider users’ mental states at every phase of the interaction.

This is something traditional writing lacks of, and where the challenge actually lies.

Addressing the current mental state“I just sent my newsletter to 500 subscribers! What if they don’t like it? What if I have typos? Oh Freddy high-fives me!” Mailchimp took into account a user’s mental state upon scheduling a newsletter, and crafted a witty success message to alleviate it.

It seems hard, but is it worth it?

UX writing is one of the most sought after skills these days, especially with the rise of conversational interfaces and chatbots. Not only that, John Maeda, in his annual Design in Tech report, suggests that besides coding, the other “unicorn” skill a designer should have would be writing.

The need for UX writers definitely will increase. Hence it is good to start building the experience needed for the role.

So, ready to level up?

Getting started with UX writing

Start writing!

Take 15 minutes every day to write freely. It does not have to be about work — it can be about thoughts on things or whatever comes to your mind.

One good example that I came across on taking notes of your observation is in this article about engaging in the moment and putting words to things. I especially love how David describes the word ‘petrichor’, the earthy scent of rain having just fallen on soil after a dry spell, “you definitely knew petrichor before you knew it had a name.” His observation on how wine-tasting professionals let their senses take in the scene so they could describe how every wine tastes like, is also worth noting.

You can start by writing something as simple as how your day goes, or what you are thankful about. If you are having problems to write, some websites offer writing prompts to get you started:

• 365 Days of Writing Prompts
• Creative Writing Prompts
• Writing Prompts subreddit

Pay attention to UX writing in the wild

One of the best ways to learn writing for UX is to observe and learn. Medium is good place to start, as it is filled with tech articles of case studies, redesign stories, tips and tricks and many more. Case studies and redesign stories will be helpful to write design justifications — it will help you to articulate your design reasoning better. 

You can also start observing on how some microcopy on the apps you have been using influence your emotions and actions. Calling for Uber? Take note of the copy they use to book a ride. Searching for a product on Lazada? How good is the search copy on the website? Good Microcopy is also one the best places to start to learn.

Ahead of the way A recent delightful microcopy I found out was how Quora provides similar questions in line with yours. If there is no similar questions posted yet, then you may proceed to submit the question.

Get feedback

Learning is a two-way process. Once you have put down a substantial amount of practice, time to get some opinions! Getting feedback helps you to see your writing from a different viewpoint, and so you can start writing more inclusively.

If there is no access to any UX professionals around you, you can seek out feedback online. Slacklist is the good place to find a UX channel start to share your work. Alternatively, there is a number of UX Facebook groups ready to help you learn.

Build portfolio

There is also something important I learned last week from author Jocelyn K. Glei on progress, “Most of us make advances small and large every single day, but we fail to notice them because we lack a method for acknowledging our progress. So, acknowledge them.”

Tracking progress Knowing she’d be overwhelmed, Glei constructed an analog ‘progress tracker’ for all the key pieces of her upcoming podcast. The minute she created this roadmap, she felt more grounded, motivated, and in control.

You wouldn’t know how good you are at writing for UX without building your portfolio. Dropbox has a good guideline on how to start building your UX writing portfolio, taking consideration of how to present your work in the context of the user’s intent & navigations.

Process, not progress

Going back to my initial thought on Smashing Magazine tweet about not being good overnight: you will not be good overnight and that is OK. If you think about it, UX writing is a marriage of two very highly skilled disciplines — user centered design and traditional persuasive copywriting. It is understandable that it will take time to be really good at these two crafts.

So start writing, observing, getting feedback and building those portfolio. If you decide to break into UX writing, or have been doing UX writing already, I’d love to hear more of your insights about this post and your experience.

In the meantime, write on!

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The communication mayhem in Building A Website, Explained

In almost all aspects, communication is the one definitive role in the success of a project.

Working separately of distance and time with the team and the client is a new experience to me. Face to face communication is easier, but it’s not always possible. Even so, there is no excuse for a disconnect in communication, especially with a number of supporting facilities that allow for effective and accurate transfer of information. Distance and time is no longer an obstacle now even if your team and your clients are not in the same location, or in the same country.

Here at Stampede, we use all sort of communication tools: Basecamp, instant messaging, voice conference, email, telephone. We even send each other reminders via ReminderFox. All these tools, when applied right, greatly facilitate the type of work we do, to help deliver ideas and keep us focused on details. I do find written communication more productive. To me, everything noted and recorded can always be quickly reopened and referenced at any point of project development. There is very little margin of misinterpretation too.

Nevertheless, you shouldn’t depend sorely on communication tools. The most basics of communication delivery is also important to master. Firm messages are easiest to understand while properly composed questions will encourage productive discussion and further attention to details. Keep your communication clear and concise. Without it, misinterpretation is bound to happen and I have seen plenty of problems resulting from the tiniest of misunderstanding.

Any successful project accounts for delivery of work product on time and with agreed and planned quality. Poor communication can result in severe delays, uneven workload and consequently, hinder a company’s growth. Good communication, on the other hand, will attract great clients and bring about the happiest of team to work with.

(Image from MIX’s brilliant Building a Website, Explained)

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