UX designers: picture your target persona. Are they white, affluent, abled, otherwise privileged? Are those traits documented, or just unconscious "defaults"? If your goal is to "create value," solving the problems of the people with the fewest problems may not be the best place to start! - ThreadSky

spavel.bsky.social • 152 days ago

UX designers: picture your target persona. Are they white, affluent, abled, otherwise privileged? Are those traits documented, or just unconscious "defaults"?

If your goal is to "create value," solving the problems of the people with the fewest problems may not be the best place to start!

Comments

polarbini.bsky.social•152 days ago

There are countless examples for this phenomenon e.g. black people didn’t get recognised by video filters unless their put a white mask on. Crash test dummies are representing the average man of western countries

polarbini.bsky.social•152 days ago

This is not a problem of money. This is a problem which the whole tech industry is affected from. Because most people working as engineers, software developers, data scientists and so on are white and male. They are simply not thinking that they product might not be working on others.

dannymittleman.bsky.social•152 days ago

And if you are right that this persona is your regular customer, targeting more toward them might just be strengthening where the bullet holes are.

tomvanantwerp.com•152 days ago

I have a vague recollection of a prime-time TV special about the firm IDEO, shown to me in college in the aughts.

What I remember most clearly from it is how they talked about designing for edge cases first. "Take care of the edges, and the middle takes care of itself." Something like that.

spavel.bsky.social•152 days ago

Objectified, great movie

helios-daedalus.bsky.social•152 days ago

Yeah, but they're the wealthiest, so you know... why target any other segment. Also who knows, you might even need to implement AODA, and then you're completely fucked.

cindyvandesand.bsky.social•152 days ago

I think most UX solve problems for people who have money to pay for having their problems solved.

conniela.bsky.social•152 days ago

i’d argue that - in my experience - this persona tends to have the most problems because they love creating them where they don’t exist.

jonathanhung.bsky.social•152 days ago

The financialization of value and conflating buyers with users

samalrasmussen.bsky.social•152 days ago

I need to make money though.

grumpymuppet.bsky.social•152 days ago

And remember: ‘Disabled’ isn’t a persona

propanezizek.bsky.social•152 days ago

UX should be made for poor people with ThinkPads and mini thinkcenters.

waiting4robots.bsky.social•152 days ago

There's validity to your point but there’s a far greater plague affecting UX… Bloated, Easter-Egg Hunt interfaces that are miserable to use no matter who you are! I’m seeing them more and more across a variety of devices and platforms.

spavel.bsky.social•152 days ago

Every second that a user spends looking for the right button is one more second of session time for a product manager's metrics

waiting4robots.bsky.social•152 days ago

Thank you Obi-Wan! Generally, I’m very good at seeing the (usually evil) ulterior motives in different things, but I never even considered your theory until now. It makes me even more upset! 😩 My UX philosophy is based on Einstein - make it as simple as possible, but not one bit simpler.

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