The court of UX is now in session.
Judge Judy yelling. Judge Judith Sheindlin — the television court judge popularly known as Judy Judy. She is known for her outlandish and performative court room antics.
Let me paint a picture for you. A team is well into the inner depths of a project. The large brush strokes of the concept have been put down, an elegant experience ties those sweeping brush strokes together, and large questions have been answered. Now it’s all about the fine details, the stuff that turns blobs of color into a picturesque Bob Ross scene.
Unlike Bob, who with the flick of a wrist, turned a green triangle into a snow-covered evergreen nestled along a sunny brook, you’re struggling with the details. And it’s almost always the benign details because that’s the designer’s weapon of choice for self-mutilation.
The big-picture stuff can be resolved by testing. No, this is the small yet still somewhat important stuff that there isn’t time to test, and it would be silly if you did. Imagine telling the boss a project is delayed several weeks because you need to prove that your method of inline editing is superior to a different form of editing? And what will they say if it happens again with a deleting action? Just pick something and move on, they’d say.
But we can’t because we’re designers. And we are designers because we have an incessant need to control our environment.
The problem is we aren’t lawyers. We didn’t take the LSATS, we didn’t pass the bar, and we didn’t brush up on UX case law the night before (if you are a UX designer and also happened to be a lawyer in your previous role, I have questions. But they mainly revolve around the state of your liver).
After nearly two decades of being a designer, I am tired. It’s an exhausting position to constantly find yourself in.
UX Court is like a mix of procedural TV drama and Judge Judy. And it’s like that because most people who aren’t lawyers think that’s how actual lawyering works. Far too many times, discussions end up in UX Court.
Something is designed. Someone suggests an alternative. One side presents their argument and introduces evidence, then the other side goes. And next thing you know, you’re citing Don Norman in the footnotes as if you’re writing legal opinions that will be studied by scholars decades later. Give me a break.
Seriously. Give me a break.
If you feel seen right now, you likely have a good amount of experience. Experience is important because it hones intuition which is used as shorthand for completing tasks. I don’t need to test a minor editing paradigm to know that one way is superior to another. It’s no different than a professional chef eyeballing a cup. She doesn’t have to measure a cup because she’s done it 8 million times. Don’t make me think.
Some of what we do is opinion-based, and having done something long enough should mean that those opinions matter. Experience is correlated with job title because a person’s knowledge base is greater. The old guy at the Y knows he should kick it out for wide open shot instead dribble driving to the hoop against an eager defender. The shorthand that comes from experience is efficiency at work.
Obviously every battle should not be fought and won. Most of us are reasonable most of the time (except when I’m in traffic, I lose my ever-loving mind), and we’ll move on if there’s strong consensus on the other side.
Product managers, engineers or executives must trust their designers. If time to implementation isn’t a barrier then just pay deference. It’s not about power and wins or losses. It’s not even about passion. It’s that if you’ve been doing something for a long time, ya kinda know what makes one solution better than the other.
If you’re a designer and this is primarily your experience, it’s time to start considering moving on and taking a new role. UX Court is brutal, it breeds resentment and eventually creates a toxic environment that makes quitting the best solution.
Conversely, if you find yourself being in court more often than Judge Judy, and liking it, then it might be a sign that you should learn to pick and choose battles.
Picking and choosing the right battles can be difficult and fraught. My suggestion is decide to circle back to it several days or a week later. Typically there’s enough work to punt. Cooler heads prevail. If you have a strong feeling towards one direction then insist on your way. Hopefully consensus has changed or your insistence causes minds to change.
If not here are some options and resources…
I like this framework for picking and choosing battles:
How to choose which battle to fight as a designer
In depth piece on picking and choosing battles:
UX court was originally published in UX Collective on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.
