UX jobs boring as shit
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- fate3
Some day you will die, and the legacy of all your hard work will be a bunch of app interfaces that no one remembers. They probably won't even bother to backup your design files.
- hahahahastudderine
- Same could be said for a lot of professions. Life and work are ephemeral.studderine
- Stick out, create a process and way of thinking and communicate it. I don't see UX as the final result, it's the workings out before the result.antonyjwhite
- Ok the song made lolollzafuturefood
- hahaprophetone
- antonyjwhite2
It really depends where you work. My role where i work encourages to push back on the problem we are trying to solve. For instance, a project we had we were told we had to do a 'big bang' solution to fix a problem. We had time to investigate the issues and found out that there were 'leaky buckets' to fix. This resulted in small changes being made very cheaply, monitoring the improvements and in the end getting a more accurate benchmark. This then meant that improvements to the various touch points were as friendly for our customer as possible. To me this is the core of UX, not just smashing out specs and wireframes but actually being user centric when problem solving. I do work in-house so I guess I have more skin in the game.
- Good point! Very easy to smash out work on the revolving hamster wheel w/o asking the right questions.studderine
- I mean in UX we are at an amazing time to switch jobs. There's tons of roles out there right now. If you aren't happy shop about, read job descriptions, networkantonyjwhite
- ... remember when being interviewed you also interview the company if it suits you. You can also get a heads up before applying by questioning.antonyjwhite
- ..I had a task in a application process and I asked a lot of questions. In the end it turned out that I was the only one to question. Make it your own!antonyjwhite
- sublocked0
^ Startup 30ish employees, real revenue, top tier VC interest, huge marketplace. Web + tablet app design. Conduct user research, do testing, design critiques, build a design culture.
- Sounds BORING AS SHIT.
jk, good luck filling the role.cannonball1978
- Sounds BORING AS SHIT.
- sublocked0
I'm working a pretty challenging, interesting UX job and need to help hire another UX professional in either the Bay Area or Portland (no remote work). If that's one of you guys, hit my email.
- BonSeff5
Focus groups compensated with amazon gift cards validate my best practices
- utopian8
A completely made up job title with no real purpose, except for milking clients for more money with fake research.
- since19790
ANd most UIs still suck. When Im in a crunch they rarely come through. Im looking at you Google.
- studderine0
I can't tell you how many times I've talked to companies and "UX Designers" that have never conducted user research.
- Al_dizzle6
This is the kind of senior level cynicism that I can only get from QBN.
The other design groups I'm in are all still packed with fresh faced juniors who still believe. In those groups, any type of glass half empty perspective is met with disgust and backlash.
Stay gOLD qbn!
- LOL!mg33
- as a non ux layperson, I'm finding all this rather interesting and surprisingly bitchy.Fax_Benson
- I just never understand why one person's perspective or enjoyment of the job they do can be such an affront to anyone else.mg33
- ^ never actually happenedcannonball1978
- stay gold... indeed <3PonyBoy
- BonSeff1
UX CAN BE FUN, DAMNIT!!
Fill out this exciting questionnaire!
(Questionnaire can be fun btw - through engaging colors, iconography and a stepped process with digestible chunks™)
- cannonball19780
Heres another one
https://www.indeed.com/viewjob?j…
If the company is based around a single interaction, then yes, there is a lot of figuring out around the logistics that go into it.
BUT
That's a job for the technical team to sort through, seeing as that they have the skills to work through the technical knowhow and implementation.
UNLESS
This job is really to paint a short story about how easy it is for one login to be accomplished to SELL the idea up the chain or to set up the company's preferences.
Seems trivial for lead-level work unless the title "lead is there only to assist the practitioner in counterparting with other departments.
Either way. zzzz
- I mean, it's super easy to look at a job in SF and be like "Well they have venture capital to burn."jtb26
- and it works because that company never has to turn a profit, they just need to get acquired by a bigger company for $profit$jtb26
- I don't think a single interaction is their product. Looks like there's a lot more that goes into it - https://www.onelogin…mg33
- Fine. Compliance and provisioning. Still a "non-experience" experience.cannonball1978
- SaaS is responsible for lots of paychecks and mouths fed. Sure it's all little bull-shitty but folks gotta eat man. It's just as disposable as anything else.jtb26
- Ask yourself: is someone with "designer" in their title the best person to figure out provisioning devices, or should a technical manager design that one.cannonball1978
- Are you saying that their suite of products, how they work, how they improve them, doesn't need UX people to be created?mg33
- Yes, I am saying that.cannonball1978
- OK, I kind of get what you're saying... sort of...mg33
- Is that company wrong if they find value in a UX designer offering insights, conducting research, evaluating data, etc, focusing on the interface, etc.?mg33
- I'm just really trying to, honestly, understand the "this is a UX job listing for a product that doesn't need UX" thing.mg33
- @jtb26 sure, but mouthes don't "deserve" to be fed. Yeas a job is a job, but my contention is that designers come up against meaningless jobscannonball1978
- Do you believe this company would derive the best value from you? Or does this company believe having UX on staff signifies corporate health for an acquisition?cannonball1978
- And more importantly: does this job interest you?cannonball1978
- Hard to say from a job description. I'd want to know where they want to take their product(s), how their team's work together, what value they feel they providemg33
- to their customers.mg33
- No, not just from a job description. Doesn't tell me much about the company, work environment, culture, etc.mg33
- I checked the site out and it feels like a million other tech companies selling a widget.mg33
- They've got "Keep Calm and Single Sign On" t-shirts though!mg33
- jtb260
I don't think UX is boring if you have the right mindset and interests. I gravitated towards UX because I got sick of listening to CEO's pontificate on color choice and being critiqued on kerning and leading by in-house pixel pushers.
Design is a super non-homogenous profession. You have different kinds of practitioners all across the spectrum from skilled graphic artists and front-end developers to purely academic user experience designers with minimal technical or creative skills. The folks dreaming up Geiko commercials and doing campaigns for Nike share a common vernacular with the folks designing the interface for paying your cable bills and you're doing your online banking; the two are worlds apart regarding the kind of value they deliver to their patrons. They're a different service and a different type of career. The later is super boring from a graphic design perspective but can be interesting and satisfying form another angle.
- cannonball19780
What I've noticed, is that a lot of work exists in places where there actually isn't much "experience" to be had. And then, as a practitioner, you are either manufacturing experience thats not needed, or more commonly reducing the amount of experience to zero because "easy".
I'll pick on insurance again- it's a really good example of this.
I feel like industry heads say "we need to capture these millennials, it's all about the experience for them" and then conflate our practice with their need to tick off "experience" on their list.
Heres an example below.What the hell does the this association need with a "Creative and UX Director" other than making sure their "find a dentist" function scales properly on mobile?
https://www.indeed.com/cmp/Calif…
I'm assuming a lot here, but can any of you imagine what nontrivial work would be done here? Maybe I'm just unimaginative.
- Pay: 90k. They ask for a Creative and UX Director but what they want is a production designer. (No slight to production designers)kona
- I'm in your boat cannonball. I'm 42, have been doing this for 18 years. Was defined as a UX designer for TV interfaces back in 2005.kona
- Most recently have been producing others ideas who's pay is larger than mine. No testing. No research. Present ideas. We'll pick thank you.kona
- cannonball19780
mg33’s “level headed” way of dick measuring... I get it. Its a trained response to need to qualify who gets to know what they are talking about.
I’ve got two years of experience on him but that doesnt mean that I have more experience. If anything, its probably different experience. More variance on industry etc and Ive been all over.. Look, even if I was a newbie, noticing that the work has become boring wouldnt be less true.
So lets dispense with assessing who gets to shake the apple cart because and get back to having a conversation about whats happening to the work and why its sapped of life.
Going bact to the heyday stuff with flash and all... we do wax nostalgic when these conversations crop up and I hink its because we were having more fun back then. The work spoke to your heart, not your requirements list.
- A heaping helping of cynicism keeps me sane. I'm 42 btw. Been at this shit since '97. We have good clients and not so good clients. And we each form opinions.BonSeff
- I'm not dick measuring cannonball. Strange that you would equate a handful of paragraphs as such.mg33
- I was just trying to level set this conversation, because, again, if someone is complaining and has a year of experience, what are they actually basing it on?mg33
- It totally is. Youre taking resumes to see who gets to discuss this topic.cannonball1978
- Props to you for having a lot of experience, whether it was good or bad. Obviously it helps to know you've been around quite a while and have amg33
- variety insights on why you think the work sucks across the industry. Is us knowing that any better or worse than knowing my perspective?mg33
- cannonball, you are 100% wrong. I just wanted to get to know what people do and how long they've done it. Jesus Christ I couldn't be more obvious.mg33
- It hasn't been bad. Advertising- there was a shitty experience. But so was working in a sheet metal factory. UX has been robotic and frankly, not creative at alcannonball1978
- The Dr. Phil of UXBonSeff
- And not requiring much skill beyond interpersonal skill sand an analytical mind, to be quite honest.cannonball1978
- MG33 you cant honestly expect anyone to take that backtracking seriously when taking resumes is paired with suggesting that the young element expects too much.cannonball1978
- cannonball19780
Oh heres the other thing I think thats hilarious.
The pseudo-adult voice that pops up any time someone makes a comment like my first one, pointing out that it must be because you are young, inexperienced, problems arent fun because you fancy yourself a special snowflake etc.
Sorry no. Im 39 and I’ve been in this for many many years and my point of view is objective. Led many projects. Worked for many industries. Worked in many cities on both US coasts (so I guess I can only speak for the US). The jobs ARE watered down to being creative accountants, as one of you pointed out.
That voice, that “maybe you need to be more adult and youll like it better” is a garbage rationale, cowed, and complacent.
And “boring” is a legitimate complaint and a very alarming one in a creative industry. A profession focused on humans that WANTS to delve deeper into the fineries of emotion and meaningfulness which is simply seen as a market advantage gets the interest sucked out of it because uninteresting people with uninteresting problems drive the work.
Insurance buy buttons are not interesting. Etc.
I think this world needs better objectives defined by better people.
- zarkonite0
@mg33 I have a different take on what's going. I don't think it's a growing pains type of scenario, I think we're really being taken over by cost reduction and we need to start showing value to the bean counters or we're all fucked.
Let's compare the type of creativity on the web to TV advertising. Most TV ads end up being marketing more than advertising, it's not very convincing or well done but it gets the information across. Just like a data driven, UX standardized website. The goal is to have your target audience "activate" and "convert"... There is however some room for more attention grabbing TV, it's rarely done because getting good creative out is like running in a minefield (unless you have the rare opportunity of having a client come to you just for that) but I think that we could still do the same with the web, we just need to sell it better (re: bonseff's post about getting shotdown over the phone, that shit doesn't happen with a real creative director in the room)... especially now that the general population is way more saavy, the cost of production is down and there are tonnes of new ways (media) to drive to a microsite or any other kind of creative execution.
- imbecile-2
if you're bored, you're not concerned enough with the X of the U
- fate1
mg33 - I got into it because of the creativity of that period.
But it's long gone.
- mg330
Continuity,
Can't fit all this in a sidebar comment but I think it's interesting that you mention "early noughties with all of that glorious experimentation, Flash, three-oh, etc, etc, etc."
I loved that stuff. Vir2l was like God status at the time. But that stuff was not sustainable. That was the Internet in it's infancy, tools in their infancy, and a wild-west approach to web design at the time. I remember countless conversations around 1999-2001 with people on Flashkit.com who thought they were going to get clutch jobs out of high school because they learned some of Josh Davis' Flash tutorials and could make stuff bounce at random on the screen. It was fun, I loved it too, but it was new media in it's infancy. Flash's coming of age moment was when they integrated XML and database connections into whatever release was new at the time. People started fusing creativity with actual purpose, things they could sell that weren't just eye candy.
That experimentation evolved as it needed to, for better or worse, but that era was not going to last forever.
