After binging NNGroup’s YouTube shorts as my type of wild Wednesday, I was inspired (as I always am) by Don Norman’s message around what the world needs from designers in the 21st century.
While the easily digestible six minute video is worth watching to get the full context and impact, I saw his ending as a message worth sharing (partially reduced) to anyone feeling like they’re beholden to how someone else perceives their title and their supposed responsibilities within.
"How do we teach people? How do we instruct the future designers of the world [with] the kind of information they need to understand the culture, the needs of the people, to work with them, to let them dictate what is being done and not be told by us - that we have to deal with the economics, we have to deal with the local conditions, we have to deal with the politics.
All of this, it's more of a management job in many ways than a design job. But, designers are the most equipped to do this because designers think broadly. Working on complex socio-technical systems - that's what we should be teaching to our young, aspiring designers"
So, for all of my fellow “UXers” in the back feeling left out or stuck in a digital-only world, you don't need a fancy job title to start noticing and improving the everyday experiences wherever you work.
Understand and practice how to ask the right questions and observe what people do; how they act, how they're influenced, how they make decisions. Tell stories of the big picture—no certificate needed.
Do this for people on both sides of the table, from the front-end customer to those making it possible behind the scenes. Everyone is a user experiencing something that could be better or worse, faster or slower, likely to work or destined to fail depending on how well their needs were understood.
If you're able to turn those observations into insights for solving complex business and "socio-technical" problems, it doesn't matter what design title you wear; you've done what needs to be done to make meaningful progress and you'll be recognised for it in due time.
Don't let titles pigeon-hole your desire to learn and make changes in the world beyond the computer screen.
