uxdesign.cc – User Experience Design — Medium | Fabricio Teixeira

Or “beware of euphemisms.”

Photo by Headway

What we say:
“Let’s look at it on Monday first thing in the morning with fresh eyes.”

What we mean:
“Dude, it’s Friday 5pm. I’m fried. You’re fried. But let’s not admit it.”

What ends up happening:
Monday-first-thing-in-the-morning never happens. In most cases for the best.

What we say:
“I like where you’re going, but I also wonder if we should explore…”

What we mean:
“I don’t like where you’re going.”

What ends up happening:
The designer, who was clearly going in the wrong direction, is never clearly told they were wrong, or what was wrong about it. A whole generation of designers grow up thinking they have always been right. And can’t understand when they end up receiving negative feedback later on.

What we say:
“What we’re showing here is just a high-level overview of what we’ve been exploring in the last two weeks, of course this will keep evolving.”

What we mean:
“We were not brave enough to make any decisions and/or to clearly state them on a slide. And although we had two weeks we were not thorough enough to finalize what we started. So we’ll just do a whole presentation avoiding strong point of views that could hurt our relationship in case you disagree with what we’re saying.”

What ends up happening:
The work gets pushed two extra weeks.

What we say:
“We’ve run some informal user testing sessions here in the office, and found out people were having a hard time identifying with what was on the screen.”

What we mean:
“I showed it to the guy who sits next to me and he didn’t like it.”

What ends up happening:
Nothing. Really.

What we say:
“I hear what you’re saying. We can definitely explore your suggestion as we refine the designs.”

What we mean:
“I don’t like your idea, sorry. I’ll pretend I try to incorporate your suggestions, and then I’ll come up with some random excuse for why it didn’t work out.”

What ends up happening:
Not a single pixel is moved.

Now in all honesty: indirect speech can help us feel better in the short term and avoid confrontational situations, but has a negative effect in the long run. Design is a team sport — and as any other team sport it requires trust and honesty amongst players. Naming a bad feeling what it really is forces you to confront it, and forces you, as a team, to learn how to overcome it.

Less euphemisms. More maturity. Please.

The lies we tell ourselves as designers was originally published in UX Collective on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.