Designer Lies
Out of context: Reply #7
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- jtb262
I mostly agree with Utopian. Among the UX Designers I've worked with (with maybe two notable exceptions) none of them were actual designers, or understood traditional graphic design principles. Which means they are utterly useless, other than to give me stats on whether the presence or particular element is useful or not.
Of the exceptions to this I can tell you what the experience was like. They do tremendous research, not on just testing, but the market as well. They can create a cohesive understanding of a system, the language and relationships between concepts. They can create a narrative that informs the work, and the work closely with the designer to execute. They don't do wireframes in isolation and then turn them over as a set of instructions and have a desire to utilize the skills of someone who knows how to make text legible and how to execute stylishly. This. Is. Rare. I'd say (in a rather anecdotal and uneducated way) that what I'm describing here represents 2% of actual UX folks. I'd say that's because it's new, and people just think it's sexy and dive in not knowing how to actually be valuable.
I'm doing UX now for my current company as well as art directing for the project and I can tell you that in system or application design it's a useful thing to have, which makes it a shame that there is so much snake oil pedaling going on in relation to it.