What universities & bootcamps don't teach about UX design
âď¸ Key takeaways
The UX process isn't linear. It's typical to jump back and forth between phases. But for some reason, bootcamps and universities teach UX like it IS linear. That's just plain wrong.
Think like a UX treasure hunter.
You start with one clue on your treasure mapâaka the problem. This provides you with your bearings and what you need to do first. So you follow the first clue and take the best next step to find the second clue.
Youâre always basing your next decision on the previous clue and the data youâve gathered so far about the treasure hunt. Â
Eventually, after finding many clues and basing your decisions on your research, youâll have found the treasureâaka built the product or feature.Â
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đŹ Transcript
Thereâs one thing that most UX bootcamps and universities donât teach students and itâs honestly hurting their chances of landing a job as a UX designer⌠What is it? Thatâs what Iâm going to talk about in this video:
So hereâs the thing. The UX process ISNâT linear. But for some reason, some bootcamps and universities teach students to follow the process like a linear checklist. Thatâs just plain wrong.
The best way to describe UX design is as a critical thinking process where you take the best next step depending on the information you currently know and what questions you need to answer.
Hereâs another way to describe it. As a UX designer, youâre basically a treasure hunter. You start with one clue on your treasure map (aka the problem). This provides you with your bearings and what you need to do first. So you follow the first clue and take the best next step to find the second clue.
Youâre always basing your next decision on the previous clue and the data youâve gathered so far about the treasure hunt. Â Eventually, after finding many clues and basing your decisions on your research, youâll have found the treasure (aka built the product or feature). Â
With that metaphor in mind, in UX, you donât do something just because. If you were searching for treasure, you wouldnât just go dig a random hole in a random spot, right? Similarly, in UX, you do something because you need to know the answer before moving forward.
For example, you donât conduct user interviews just because you think you ought to. You might do them because you have questions that can only be answered by users. Or maybe you need to validate your concept with them. Whatever the reason, you need to have a WHY behind doing something.
Again, you use your critical thinking powers to determine your best next step based on your current position, what you know, and what you need to learn.
As a UX designer, unless youâre working with a researcher, you are the decision maker behind what research is done for the project youâre working on. Which is why itâs so important that you donât look at UX as a checklist or as a linear process. With most projects in the real-world, you jump back and forth between different phases of the UX process.
You always base your decisions off of the data you currently have and what you still need to answer.
If you can get your answers from other products in the market, great.
If you can get them from other existing research, fantastic.
If you have to validate them with users, thatâs also great.
Unfortunately, many bootcamps and universities teach that this is the only way and if you donât do it this way youâre doing it wrong. Thatâs absolutely false.
The point is, you donât always have to be the one conducting user research to be following a human-centered process. What matters is that you base your decisions on data.
With that in mind, when youâre done with our free course, we want you to start thinking through what questions you need to answer and how youâll go about getting those answers so you can solve your problem.
Thatâs where framing the problem comes in, and weâll cover that in a few lessons. Itâs one of the very few things we do on every project regardless of project size. It helps provide you with a true understanding of the problem and what questions you need to answer so you know youâre creating the right solution for the user. You then use that document as a north star throughout any given UX project. You continually check back in with the document to make sure youâre solving the right problem and that youâve answered all of your questions.
In the future, when youâre using your new found UX skills, we want you to start thinking like a UX treasure hunter. Always be asking yourself, whatâs the best next step to take based off of what I know now and what I still need to learn?Then do the thing that makes the most sense.