Published on | Prototyping: From UX to Front End — Medium Brooklyn Morris

Because research doesn’t always = reading.

I love researching. I was one of those students that actually liked writing research papers in school. Once I got into design, I became fascinated with the whole design process. I believe that you can’t effectively design something until you fully understand the reason behind it, and researching is an integral part of that process.

But when did researching and reading become the same thing?

Let’s be real. As designers, we spend hours a day in front of a computer. The internet isn’t just at our fingertips, it’s a large part of our work and everyday life. Because of this, we often fall in this trap of reading = researching. Don’t get me wrong, the internet is a tool that allows us to do our job. However, there are so many other resources that we could be using as well.

How often do we hear, “Get in the user’s mindset.”

“Understand what they want.”

“Predict what they need.”

I suggest you take it one step further. Because at some point, you should stop reading and start doing.

The best research is experience

To all the UI/UX designers out there — the word “experience” is literally in your job title. How can we craft an experience for a user when we don’t understand what their human experience is?

If you are designing an app to keep track of golf scores, go golfing. Try it out. Don’t just read about the game. Play the game.

If you’re redesigning a website for a Mexican restaurant, go try their food. Talk to the owners, and listen to their story.

Branch out from your internet bubble. 🙂

General life advice

This doesn’t only apply to design, but to life in general. How many trips have you researched/planned but never actually went on? My junior and senior years of university, my friends and I decided that we wanted to go on a trip after graduating. One of my friends spoke Japanese, so we decided to go to Japan with him for a couple of weeks. We spent months researching and planning. We came up with a whole list of places we wanted to go, things we wanted to see, food we wanted to eat, etc..

Eventually a year had passed by, and I had learned a lot about Japan from researching. The problem was that we had spent so much time reading about it, rather than actually booking flights to go. I would have learned much more quickly if we had just gone and experienced the culture first hand.

The fact is, you’ll learn a lot faster by experience than by words.

<a href="https://medium.com/media/b85dfbb5286d8a25cf2e754b9462cf45/href">https://medium.com/media/b85dfbb5286d8a25cf2e754b9462cf45/href</a>

You should stop reading was originally published in Prototypr on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

You should stop reading

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