UX design is in disarray. The idea of design-for-use has been replaced with design-for-sales, and its incentives (make more features so that you have more shit to sell) don't align with user-centered work. In this issue, I investigate the ground-level view of how this happened and how to stop it. - ThreadSky

spavel.bsky.social • 9 days ago

UX design is in disarray. The idea of design-for-use has been replaced with design-for-sales, and its incentives (make more features so that you have more shit to sell) don't align with user-centered work.

In this issue, I investigate the ground-level view of how this happened and how to stop it.

Comments

themattbass.bsky.social•9 days ago

Just keep shipping, just keep shipping

andybudd.bsky.social•9 days ago

Not read the article yet (added it to my backlog) but I like the framing of design for sales via design for use.

andybudd.bsky.social•9 days ago

I personally think the design industry has been too focused on the latter and ignored the importance of the former. So I see the current trend as a rebalancing. But of course you can go too far in the other direction.

andybudd.bsky.social•9 days ago

I think UX Designers have acted like nutritionists and had a campaigning “eat your greens” mentality for too long. They’re not wrong, but it’s frustrated restaurant owners whose main focus’s is tempting diners and selling meals.

andybudd.bsky.social•9 days ago

This might mean shifting the focus from nutrition to flavour, and be willing to have burgers and pizza next to the occasional kale salad.

odannyboy.bsky.social•9 days ago

At Adaptive Path, we called this the Spinach/Candy problem. We always tried to hide the spinach inside the candy. "Spinach Candy" was the code word

andybudd.bsky.social•9 days ago

Candy with a spinach centre sounds disgusting 🤢

odannyboy.bsky.social•9 days ago

It's probably a delicacy somewhere

spavel.bsky.social•9 days ago

It's from Papanek

numerius.bsky.social•8 days ago

I would argue it’s not just design. I know places where they/we build two products. One for sales/C-level buyers and one for the users. And it’s usually not pretty.

peterme.com•9 days ago

For our first 3-4 years, Adaptive Path’s primary clients were marketers. It was only after Jesse coined Ajax that we shifted to product. But product folks never quite knew what to do with us.

davidnett.bsky.social•3 days ago

Oh gosh this stabs me directly in the heart.

spavel.bsky.social•3 days ago

Don't worry, the next one is about how to fix it

davidnett.bsky.social•3 days ago

Excited to read it!

ddt.bsky.social•3 days ago

Nice article! I think, from what I've seen in the last decade, how design is taught and hired for also creates a mindset, expectations, and incentive structures for this. UX bootcamps teach how to have a pretty portfolio; hiring focuses on "can you redesign this UI or a new feature"?

ddt.bsky.social•3 days ago

And then these people become managers and well, that's never a good sign.

spavel.bsky.social•3 days ago

I'm actually writing the next part right now (this Friday-morning newsletter comes out on Sunday afternoons) and this is the perfect framing for one of the sections.

ddt.bsky.social•3 days ago

Nice!

And this sadly seems evergreen: https://medium.com/@danmaccarone/the-ux-of-learning-ux-is-broken-f972b27d3273

spavel.bsky.social•8 days ago

I didn't think we'd hit 500 subs by the end of March but this issue got us there with room to spare. I only wish that "everything is bad and depressing" wasn't what resonated best with people - although I suspect a lot of readers don't want to miss part 2 which will be a lot more positive.

aptakhin.name•9 days ago

I see important here it should be shared efforts of product, design and devs to bring not even UX, at least some quality to the products. The issue we are usually incompetent exactly enough to be unable to proof this will affect revenue more than feature factoring

cyetain.com•9 days ago

More like Design for Usury

bkenna1.bsky.social•9 days ago

You make great points. 1 thing I’d add is that early success by the field led to many people entering the field without the necessary training to succeed & no great feedback loop to learn - org not setting design up for success. This leads to looking to take orders from sales and others.

bkenna1.bsky.social•9 days ago

If you’re new and learning, it’s a lot less risky job and career wise to build what someone said is the right thing.

When things go sideways (and in those situations, it eventually does), it becomes a circular firing squad, with everyone looking to pass the blame off.

bkenna1.bsky.social•9 days ago

Unfortunately, This led to depreciation for the field/craft. If design can’t make it great (misguided as *it* might be), then design must not be all that great.

gina.bzky.team•9 days ago

Same for interior architecture & design (my niche, at least). Every client wants to “maximize sales displays” and/or “showcase 3rd party retailers.”

spavel.bsky.social•9 days ago

I think it's so great that all stores fell over themselves about how revolutionary Apple Stores were when they first came out, and then applied none of those lessons to their own displays

slimdude.ca•9 days ago

I saw a weed store in Victoria BC that was just like an Apple Store.

gina.bzky.team•9 days ago

lol hahaha lol hahaha lol

Comments

Posting Rules

Reply