Every design challenge is a story you haven’t finished writing yet.
Photo by Aaron Burden on Unsplash
“Hey… don’t write yourself off yet”
I’m a UX Designer for pay, and I’m a writer for fun. But as I meet new people, they seem more curious about the writing than the designing.
Why do I write? I write because I’m a bad designer — or, at least, I have been, I sometimes am, and I might be again in the future. I write because I have lessons to learn. I write because I have mistakes to make. And I write because I get stuck. Simply put, I write because my story isn’t over yet.
Writing for the toughest critic
I often write just to give the critic in my head a space to vent. Outwardly I’m an extrovert, but I’m also extremely introspective. The introspection bleeds into self-consciousness, and the self-consciousness bleeds into anxiety. I don’t easily forget my awkward stumbles and I “Monday-morning quarterback” my meetings as soon as I hang up. Did I misunderstand that last question someone asked? What if I didn’t notice someone trying to speak up? Were my ideas valid or just exciting?!? It’s not easy or fun to look back in the mirror with a critical eye; personally, I can’t help it. But over the years I’ve learned that on the other side of self-consciousness is a superpower of self-awareness. Looking at situations from a 10,000 foot view gives me perspective into the past, the context, and most importantly the uncertain future.
The benefit of self-reflection is that I notice when I’m not projecting my best self. I can sense when I’m getting frustrated. I start to wonder if I’m being stubborn. I feel the weight when I’m creatively blocked, when I’m not in a growth mindset. And when I realize I’m being these things I don’t want to be, I pause myself, retreat to that aerial view, and reflect on what’s really going on.
Tell me about a time…
I hate job interviews. Behavioral interviews are essentially professional storytelling, but with superlative topics: your proudest achievement, your most challenging lesson, your toughest compromise, your worst conflict. Unless your office is a scripted sitcom, your mundane 9-to-5 probably doesn’t present itself in such extremes.
Okay, maybe it’s for the best that I don’t work in a sitcom office
And besides, who wants to rehash that bad day at work? When asked, how’s the story going to sound? “Well, I remember there was this project, and I was mad about something, and… I can’t recall why, but eventually the project worked out okay I guess.” I’ve been that job candidate and it didn’t go well. A friend once sent me a Notion template of common questions with spaces to fill in my answers as a way to prepare for interviews. But I couldn’t fill in stories that hadn’t happened yet.
I remember the day I started writing about design. I remember because it was one of my most frustrating days as an early-career designer. Miscommunicated deadlines, ambiguous feedback, and ego clashes brewed into a storm of anger and powerlessness. I felt that self-reflective pause. I didn’t like being visibly angry or powerless in public. And my perspective changed when I realized I was in the middle of a future job interview story. Asking about someone’s past conflicts is a useful interview question because it reveals character. And in that moment I realized I was a character. And I had the chance to write that interview story as it was happening. Many literary characters experience conflict, but the real drama of a story begins after that conflict. A well-written character has agency to shape their destiny. Staying angry is the boring way out. Being the protagonist of a behavioral interview story is way more exciting.
Three types of stories for three types of stuck
The better I’ve gotten at identifying these story moments, the more I’ve appreciated that every professional challenge is merely a story of a different size. I recently worked on a difficult project that involved stress, frustration, and directional changes beyond my control. With each emotional high and low, I rolled with the punches by recognizing that at a low level or a high level, it was just another part of the story.
User stories
At the ground level, storytelling should be part of a designer’s everyday life
On that particular project, I found myself creatively blocked. The task was abstract and theoretical. My initial sketches were incremental, unimaginative, and didn’t advance the conversation forward. When I went back to the drawing board examined my design thinking toolkit, I remembered the power of a good user story. Starting from a real, research-driven problem allowed me to strengthen both sides of the story arc so that the proposed solution was just as compelling as the known problem.
By the next design meeting, my sketches paired with each step of the story made all the difference. The story stimulated our imaginations and provoked discussions that brought us much closer to our goal.
Case studies
One level up, a case study narrates the more complex direction that a project might take
User stories are great building blocks for a solid project, but even with a great design, things happen outside a designer’s control. I’ve had a few recent experiences where I received research that contradicted my design hypothesis, or an organizational realignment reversed some previous structural decisions, or a project was simply deprioritized.
In each of those cases, it’s not pleasant to receive the news. But those are common occurrences that are part of a real-life design scenario. Rather than get upset, I’ve reminded myself that regardless of the outcome, I’ll get a good case study out of each one. The pivot is merely a plot twist and I better write down the story while it’s fresh in my mind.
Growth stories
Every small story is part of a bigger story in your arc as a designer. If you step back far enough, you’ll start to see how far you’ve come.
While preparing for an annual review, I reflected on a number of recent projects, considered their case study arcs, and looking back from that aerial view, I could see the ways I had stepped out of my comfort zone, did something that used to scare me, or matured in my handling of a situation. It wasn’t about the personal growth itself; that always happens over time. But seeing it from that arc reminded me just how many stressful, exhausting, difficult days contributed to that storyline. Now, when I’m in the trenches of one of those difficult days, I keep my head up by recognizing that there’s probably a good growth story at the end of it.
Enhanced storytelling with CARDIO
In order to tell a good story about a work experience, you need to be able to tell the story in a way that’s direct and concise, while also providing enough context and detail to explain what happened. The classic framework for this is the STAR method (Situation, Task, Action, Result), but I’m more fond of Pavel Samsonov’s CARDIO method (Context, Assumptions, Research, Discoveries, Iterations, and Outcomes).
What I love about Pavel’s CARDIO paradigm is that it forces a more powerful narrative from the story. You can check all the STAR boxes and still frame the situation poorly. What makes it a design problem is the context and the assumptions that ultimately drive your approach: When did this happen? What options were available? What compromises did you have to make? What was out of your control? Likewise, actions and results are important parts of these stories, but due to the contextual constraints, sometimes the actions and results aren’t so causal or straightforward. But even if the story is about a negative experience, there should be a discovery (about the product or yourself), iteration (innovation or self-improvement), and an outcome (which can be so much more than just an output).
Use your words…
Writing is therapeutic. Writing is uncomfortable. Writing is difficult. Writing is cathartic. Writing is draining. These facts don’t contradict one another. Writing requires taking something abstract and emotional and making it organized and logical. Much like the five whys help a UX researcher get at the root of a user’s problem, forcing yourself to explain a challenge unravels it into what’s really wrong. (Sometimes you’ll even find that nothing is wrong!)
Stories make so much more sense when they have a beginning, middle, and end. That’s why it can be frustrating to be in difficult situations when you don’t know how they’ll end. You don’t have to be good at writing. You don’t have to share your stories with anyone else. But when you begin to see everything as a story, you’ll realize that you’re part of something much bigger than the situation at hand.
“It just takes some time…”
As Jimmy Eat World reassured us 23 years ago, “You’re in the middle of the ride, everything everything will be just fine, everything everything will be alright.” So go on and finish your story.
You’re not stuck; you’re just in a story was originally published in UX Collective on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.
