Life Imitates Design
7 lessons we can learn from UX designers and apply to everyday life.
1. Good communication sometimes means saying less
Being bombarded with information can lead to cognitive overload, creating a poor user experience. UX designers focus on keeping things simple, clear, and relevant to the user’s needs.
In life, don’t clutter the message you’re trying to send with unnecessary information.
Be clear, be concise.
I can’t tell you how many times my boyfriend has called customer service, given them a long backstory with unnecessary details, and ends up not getting the answer he needs (unless I take the phone away from him).
Focus on sharing the information that is important in the moment, share extra details as they become relevant.
2. Know which feedback is constructive
In design, it is important to know if what someone is saying is constructive or nonsensical.
Just like how designers need to be able to decipher what changes they actually need to make, you should know when to take someone’s opinion with a grain of salt.
Someone who has no perspective on what it is you’re trying to achieve can sometimes offer advice that is invaluable, or advice that’s not valuable at all.
It’s up to you, your experience, and your gut to decide if someone’s opinion should matter to you.
No matter what, keep an open mind.
3. Be empathetic
This is huge in UX design. If you go into the field without the ability — or willingness to learn how — to be empathetic, your designs will fail. Your users will not be able to navigate through your interface, and you will get frustrated.
If you aren’t empathetic in life, you will also get frustrated. You won’t be able to understand why people don’t behave the way you want them to, and people may see you as stubborn.
Empathetic people make great friends. People will feel more comfortable talking to you and trust you more. You’ll be someone who ‘gets it’.
Being empathetic will help your own sanity, as well as improve your perspective when it comes to Human-Human-Interaction.
4. Make decisions that you can defend
Designers have to defend their decisions all the time, and for good reason. Meaningless design can be counterintuitive and oppressive as it shows a lack of consideration for the users and the stakeholders.
In your own life, you should also have this mentality.
My motto is: don’t do things that you wouldn’t want to explain to others.
Can you really defend charging $200 shoes on your credit card when you have $12 in your bank account?
What about staying out until 3AM when you have work at 7AM?
Eating someone else’s food?
So you either need to start making better decisions, or you need to be shameless. Either is fine.
Just please take other people into consideration (and don’t touch my food).
5. People don’t always say what they mean
Users like to think that they know what they do and don’t want… but sometimes they just don’t. There’s a communication gap between user researchers and user interviewees, and a good researcher knows to look for nonverbal cues to decipher what a user actually wants. Read more about this topic in one of my other articles.
Have you ever asked your partner if they’re hungry, they say no, but 5 minutes later they’re eating your fries? Over time, you learn when no really means yes.
Pay closer attention to peoples’ body language, tone, and habits to learn what they’re really feeling.
6. You’ll never know until you try
Usability testing. The process that exposes all of your mistakes. It’s heartbreaking, but essential to good design work.
The only way to improve is to try, try, and try again.
The same applies to life.
Flesh out problems. Make mistakes. Fix them. Learn your lesson. Try again.
7. Substance over style
“In talking about a design’s ‘look and feel’ feel wins every time.” -Jakob Nielsen
A useless app with pretty colors is still useless. That’s the whole point of user experience design, to make usable, functioning interfaces.
Good looks matter for all of two seconds. Then people get bored and move on.
You’ve heard it a million times before: it’s what’s on the inside that counts.
Maybe don’t go with the notion of how easily people are ‘used’, but go with how people make you feel.
Some of these are obvious, some of these might be new to you. But the recognition of parallels between life and design is a beautiful thing.
