Ultimate UX weapons
Arm yourself with these five UX quotes to win any design battle.
As product and UX-ers, we often have to stand firm and defend design from a different barrage of attacks each day.
Sometimes it’s the onslaught from tech.
Sometimes it’s shots taken by stakeholders.
Sometimes it’s one-on-one combat with the product manager.
When we go headfirst into UX battles, we need to ensure we’re armed with the right weapons to defend our work, our process, and our designer recruits; so we can all live to design another day.
“There’s a big difference between defending work, which a designer must know how to do, and being defensive about work, which a designer should never do.” — Mike Monteiro
Words are the most powerful weapon in our arsenal.
They’re our communication ammunition.
Words can make people smile, and they can make people cry. Words can win the enemy over in a blink of an eye or start a war before sunrise.
There’s an old childhood chant, “sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me.” UTTER RUBBISH… Words do hurt. They can cause a lot of pain, so choose them wisely (treat them as weapons).
Quotes and stories can help defuse sticky situations, but they can also get you stuck in them. They can form a solid defence just as well as they can initiate a fully-fledged attack.
A quote is a powerful thing—the ultimate wordplay weapon.
Arm yourself with these five UX quotes, and you’ll be ready for any design war that comes your way. Believe me. They do work. I’ve used them out in the field.
UX weapon 1: the grenade
To defuse: “Why don’t we just use the tech that we’ve already built?”
Throw this quote from behind your desk when you need to STOP the tech team in their tracks. If the tech fits, use it, but don’t force it; the technology needs to fit like a glove.
“You have to start with the customer experience and work backwards to the technology.” — Steve Jobs
UX weapon 2: the knife
To defuse: “Can we just design some screens before we agree on the product strategy?”
When it’s imperative that a key stakeholder understands, get up close and whisper this quote slowly from ear to ear — puns for show, quotes for a pro.
“Define what the product will do before you design how the product will do it.” — Alan Cooper
UX weapon 3: the bazooka
To defuse: “We don’t understand why your running all these design thinking sessions?”
When ALL the stakeholders have turned hostile, BLAST this Einstein quote out to secure the area and win them back round.
“If I were given one hour to save the planet, I would spend 59 minutes defining the problem and one minute resolving it.” — Albert Einstein
UX weapon 4: the uzi
To defuse: “The designs look and work great, but we can’t use those components.”
Not all stakeholders understand you sometimes have to break things to fix them. So scatter some ‘Simon says…’ around the room when you need approval to improve a rigid design system.
“If no one ever broke the rules, then we’d never advance.” — Simon Sinek
UX weapon 5: the sniper rifle
To defuse: “That’s not the way I designed it.”
When ONE troublesome stakeholder is de-railing the entire project, time to focus, pick your spot, and fire one perfect quote their way — if they don’t believe in research data, then you have no choice but to declare a design war!
“Without data, you’re just another person with an opinion.” — W. Edwards Deming
Good luck in your design wars, pick your weapons wisely and may the designer always WIN.
“You have enemies? Good. That means you’ve stood up for something, sometime in your life.”―Winston Churchill
References
- Main image ‘Tropic Thunder (2008)’.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tropic_Thunder - ‘Sticks and Stones’ chant. https://idioms.thefreedictionary.com/sticks+and+stones+may+break+my+bones+(but+words+will+never+hurt+me)
Knowledge is power.
So keep learning, keep preparing, and keep listening.
