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This is the Nielsen Norman Group UX Podcast. Welcome to Season 2 of our Humble Podcast. I'm Therese Fessenden, and I just wanted to start by saying thank you. The reason Season 2 is possible is because of you, our listeners, and your support. So instead of just doing the regular thing, which I still think is great, but we decided to do something a little bit different.
There was this tweet that I saw circulating around February, and this idea had been stirring around in my mind for a little while. But this tweet by Alison Grace read, What's a UX hill you regularly die on? And it got me thinking. There are so many UX concepts, principles, and design choices that if I ask any professional in the industry, somebody undoubtedly has a really interesting answer. ♪
So I pose this question to our NNG community, to people who have attended our conferences, those who are UX certified or UX master certified, and also those working their way toward those certifications. And you know what? People delivered. And of course, some of our own NNG team members couldn't help but share their answers with me when I pitched this idea a while back. So you'll hear some of those voices too. As for the UX hill I would die on?
Well, if you want to grow the field and if you want UX to be taken seriously, knowledge should be shared. But I mean, I suppose I'm biased with that hill given that I run a UX podcast. But hey, don't just take it from me. Here are the UX hills that our community would defend. To the death! Okay, well hopefully not to the death, but here's what they'll stand by pretty fiercely. Here's Chris Calligan, a UX and Optimization Director at McCann Manchester, sharing his UX hill.
The UX hill that I would die on is that designers don't need to code. There are already plenty of no-code and low-code tools on the market to help designers communicate with stakeholders, whether that be engineers or end users. However, designers do need to understand the capabilities and the constraints of the platforms they're working with. But that can come about by collaborating and working closely with their engineers.
Now, if designers do have the time to learn something new, then they should invest it in research and testing instead. Having a deeper understanding of the problem space and end users will only make them better designers and ultimately result in more effective experiences. I've seen this firsthand many times with people that have passed through my team. They've accelerated their user-centered design ability and topped up their design intuition by spending more time with end users.
either by interviewing them, conducting usability tests with them, or by making sense of their behavior through web and UX analytics. So my advice is to spend less time developing coding skills to communicate a solution and spend more time understanding how to research and better understand the people you're designing for.
But folks didn't just talk about responsibilities. They also talked about the nitty-gritty design details that people miss all the time. Here's Kara Pernice, Senior VP at NNG, sharing her seemingly simple and yet often neglected UX hill.
So, Kara, what is the UX hill that you would die on? I would die, Therese, on a UX hill that is about subheadings on text pages. I would like subheadings to look like subheadings and normal text to look less subheading.
important. And I want people to be able to quickly scan to a subheading, read it, decide if they're interested, and then move on if they're not. And if they are interested, they can choose to read the normal text. I think that's a really great way to allow people to choose where they want to spend their time and help them economize on their time and fixations. Yeah. And I remember there are two different types of patterns, right? You've got like your
your layer cake pattern, which would be assuming that somebody reads. And then if they decide, I'm not interested in that, they can skip and they can go down to the next section and they can read a little bit more kind of like that layer cake, right? The icing being in between those. Exactly. That's why I named it the layer cake pattern. When we did that eye tracking research, I was like, this looks like a cake. I was probably hungry. Yeah.
And you can see the fixations on the subheading and then they ignore the text below and then fixations on the subheading. So it's those, yeah, that cake look. And then when you're interested, you read that content below. Yeah. Headings get all the love. Subheadings do not get enough love.
No, and if you do nothing else in your page design, I say that is the most important thing. Make things, make subheadings look like subheadings and normal text look less important, you know, visually, whatever that is with, you know, size, color, font. I mean, anything like that you can use to prioritize or deprioritize the look of text. So do it because it'll make people move faster and be happier with your pages. That's my hill.
I'm on it. I'm high up. Thank you. And she wasn't alone in this sentiment of making things easier for users, even if it seems trivial. Here's UX Master Certified Mary Formanek, Senior UX Lead at CACI International in Phoenix, Arizona, sharing her two UX hills.
Hi, my name is Mary. So the two UX Hills I would die on is labeling your icons. For some reason, it is still an issue. I will go to my grave with this on my headstone without a doubt. And then the other one is that you are not the user. I get this a lot when I'm working. A lot of people in my industry think that they are the user because we do not have a lot of access to users. So those are the two hills that I would absolutely die for.
Mary's TikTok channel is @UXwithMary. Now, if you've listened to the last season, you know that we share the same perspective that we UX professionals are rarely ever the user. Previous UX conference attendee Ben Xie, a UX consultant and product designer in Stockholm, shares his take on this and how UX isn't just a passing fad or a buzzword.
One UX argument that I will defend to death is basically UX user experience is a word. This is simple, but a lot of people just forget this. UX has its own meaning and should never be mixed up with something like user interface, prototyping, or making my logo bigger. I believe the role of a UX designer is to be the person that's doing whatever you can do
to experience what your user is experiencing. That's the only way to design a good user experience. I often see managers or leaders telling designers that, you know, I trust their skills. There's no need to do user research or test things because you can use your intuition as a designer to make all the decisions on your own.
When I hear this, I'm always like, yes, I trust my skills too. But what I trust is my skills to improve the life of the users, the experience of the users, and not the experience of my life or the CEO's life. This can never be done without users.
UX should always be about the users that you are serving. And that's, I think, always the most important thing to keep in mind when working on UX. UX is not a buzzword. UX is about users.
And that concept of UX being something to talk about versus something to do is something that NNG UX specialist Rachel Krause really goes in on as she describes her several UX hills. So, Rachel, what is the UX hill you would die on? The UX hill that I would die on is that doing research is really only half of the battle. I think there's a lot of times that we...
do research. We have all this fun with post-it notes and analysis and talking to people, and that's awesome, right? But we have to actually go one step further and make real decisions based on the research that we've done. We can't just stop and say, yay, cool, we did research. We have to actually make those decisions. And it's kind of like this concept of UX theater that I think was popularized by Tanya Snook. And it's really this
Hey, we've got to actually do stuff with research. We can't just like have fun. Another UX hill that I would die on is that we put too much emphasis on tools. There is always the talk of the latest, greatest technology or piece of software thing you have to use, especially in the design world.
Like, what's the best tool to use for designing things? Well, it's whatever's going to get the job done. It doesn't necessarily matter that the tool has to do all of these different things. Really, the tool is what gets that ultimate documentation forward. So UX is not about pushing pixels and making everything look pretty and doing all this stuff to make everything aesthetically pleasing.
Good UX is actually a mastery of soft skills and talking about the value of UX, selling UX and this understanding of users and why that's important internally to the organization. So spend less time focusing on tools and more time figuring out how we can do some of the selling internally.
Yeah, I get questions all the time about tools because there's this belief that if I just have the right tool, it's like this magic bullet that can make UX happen for me. But there's still the work. There's still the UX work that we have to do. We have to do the research. We have to synthesize our findings and actually make sense of that research, make decisions. And there are all of these skills required
Whether that's coordinating all these efforts, communicating visually, a tool won't ever teach you that. It's all based off of the process. The process is what gets that done. So 100% agree. That's such a good point too. It's like,
cool, everyone wants this magic tool that's going to solve all of their problems in the world, cure world hunger, all of this stuff. And unfortunately, there is an actual process that you have to learn and lean on first. And you could do that
regardless of tool. I can design something in a sketchbook with Post-its, with a pen and a Sharpie. I don't need to have Figma or XD or Sketch or Aksher or whatever the latest and greatest hot tool is right now. It's about, like you said, the process and leaning into that process and really trusting that it's going to work and be creative that way rather than relying on some magical tool to
spit out some beautiful design. Yeah. The power is not in the tool. It is in you. Oh my gosh. So cheesy, but so true. At least I believe that. Okay. Another UX hill I would die on. I have so many UX hills is that UXers don't have a monopoly on good ideas. There were a lot of
emotions, I guess, whenever I talk about democratizing UX in the organization, whether that's through design or research and bringing other people into the process. I think there's this fear that people have that, well, if I let other people that are not UXers into the process and I make this more transparent, that I'm going to facilitate my way out of a job. And
I actually don't think that's the case at all. I think it's the opposite. I think we get more buy-in from others in the process because they see what we actually do and we're not disguised behind this cloak of mystery in this little black box where we do all that, you know, post-it activities.
where people actually get to be involved and increase their ownership and buy into the process, and they want to help out. I've never had it where I've brought someone into a user interview, and then they're like, oh, yeah, I can do this from now on, Rachel. I'm going to kick you off the project. That's not a thing that happens. It's more like, Rachel, I would love to help out with this. Let's do more interviews. And that, I think, is...
is a great thing. We shouldn't shy away from bringing others into the process. So we don't have a monopoly on good ideas. If anything, bringing others in takes the pressure off of us from having to have the right answer all the time.
Rachel's final hill about involving others in UX work is something you'll hear from seasoned UX professionals time and time again. In fact, the last UX hill that I'll share with you is the advice of fellow NNG UX specialist, Anna Cayley.
So I think the UX hill that I would die on or something I feel really passionate about is the fact that UX needs to be brought in early on in the discovery process for people
You know, considering what users' needs are, what problems actually exist in the space, the context behind the situation. Too often, UX is kind of left out of that early process or that early phase of product development. And they're sort of brought in too late, right?
assumingly, you know, just to clean things up or make the interface look pretty, which we all know at this point, UX is about so much more than that. So I think that's a major area where, you know, I take a very strong stance to say that UX needs to be brought in at the very beginning, along with engineering peers and partners, and
so that UX, engineering and product can all move forward in an aligned way, in a partnered way to really create the best product and the best outcome for the people that they're serving. So that is something I won't back down on. UX needs to be involved early and often in collaboration with engineering and product.
That was Anna Kaley, and she will actually be our next featured guest on the show. So next episode, we'll be chatting about what it really means to set a vision and how teams can actually make these visions happen. In fact, in a couple weeks, October 18 to 22, she and our chief designer, Sarah Gibbons, will be facilitating a new UX series about establishing a UX vision and strategy.
You can sign up for that at our website at nngroup.com. That's N-N-G-R-O-U-P dot com. And don't forget, we also have loads of free articles and videos to
to check out at that same website. And of course, if you would like to continue to support our show, please leave a review on Apple Podcasts and subscribe to our show, no matter what platform you choose. This episode was written and produced by me, Therese Fessenden, and all post-production and editing was done by Jonas Zellner. Special thank you to guests Chris Callaghan, Cara Pernice, Mary Formanek, Ben Shi, Rachel Krause, and Anna Kaley.
Thanks for listening, and until next time, remember, keep it simple.
