I never look UX seriously in the past few years as a developer. I think it’s the responsibility of designer or researcher, not developer. It’s just a buzzword to me. After a UXQCC foundational course, I have to say it totally change my mind. In this post, I would like to share a little what I learned, especially if you are a developer.
Feedback from engineering
Often, you don’t know why, but you think the design would make your code mess then you reject the feature and conflict with the design team. Let’s image, once you have knowledge of UX you can understand and provide evaluation: Is that worth to increase more schema, more code to implement the design. You can provide the feedback accurately, convince your co-workers with more evidence.
There are 5 target variables I learned from usability. I think you can discuss with your UX designer about Learnability, Satisfaction, Efficiency, Memorability, Errors. Finally, you can make a good decision and good products and reduce conflict.
Think about if your designer knows how to implement their design roughly in code. They have the ability to avoid complexity and reach the same goal. They know it could be implemented or not. On another hand, What if you understand “Human Perception”, “Mental Model”, “Gestalt Laws” etc. It could make your communication better. Understand each other I think it’s important since you know why they make this kind of decision. You no longer against each other.
Adopt more perspectives
You may hear a11y, but be honest, I never consider how serious is in the past. I heard about “Universal Design” and HCI, but I never try to understand those users’ backgrounds. It’s not a definition, It’s always happening in reality. For example, you can try this kind of tool in your projects — Colorblinding to check what they see your website. Is that easy to identity the button or not?
Learn about what is abnormal trichromats and realize there is 8% of people are affected. Then you can have a discussion such as does the product need to increase complexity for that 8% of people or they are not your audiences. Now you make a decision base on reasons, principle, not just your opinion.
Try to learn more apart from programming, algorithm, you will have more perspectives, you may have a different angle in your projects.
It’s worth extending your skill with. In a sentence, I think I get a different level of vision to look at my projects.
