Dear Reader,
You're working as a UX Designer, but something doesn't feel right.
There's never enough time to talk to customers. Instead of satisfying customer needs, you spend all of your time delivering on an endless backlog.
As time goes on, you get pushed further and further towards the end of projects. As the deadlines get shorter, the list of "required" screens grows.
You wonder if the only reason you have a job is that you know Figma, and your manager doesn't. You feel under-challenged and overworked.
What's happening here?
You, my friend, are stuck in the “Delivery Trap.”
— Don Norman
When designers are only judged by outputs and speed, that’s the Delivery Trap.
The Delivery Trap is a concept with many names:
Companies that put design in the Delivery Trap, appreciate design for the artifacts that it produces, not the problems it solves. They understand design from a UI level, but not the UX level.
These companies think that design is only a delivery phase, especially common in the agency world.
These companies may sell you on the idea of user-centered design but when the job starts, it's all about visuals and output...not customer outcomes.
Design should never be a phase of a project. It should be integral to the whole project.
— John Maeda
Design isn't gold plating you can add to the end of a project. Design isn’t a workshop you can run with your team.
It's an end-to-end process that turns customer insights into valuable experiences.
How do you escape the Delivery Trap?
The escape is all about discovery...
Learn How to Escape the Delivery Trap |
Until next week!
Jeff Humble
Designer & Co-Founder
The Fountain Institute
P.S. We just announced the first free masterclass of 2023 on research operations called Unlock Your Team's Research Potential
The Fountain Institute is an independent online school that teaches advanced UX & product skills.
How to Build Comfort with Ambiguity By Hannah Baker Dear Reader, You're expected to lead even when you have no idea what the hell is going on. (I know, you’ve heard the next part a million times. Bear with me.) The world is moving faster than ever. Technologies shift overnight. Markets pivot on a dime. And somehow, you’re still just trying to get everyone to show up to the team meeting. We all know this, we’re surrounded by it. The speed, the volatility, the endless flood of decisions....
When Hype Comes Before User Insight by Jeff Humble Dear Reader, Have you ever seen a hyped-up product that felt worthless? Today I want to tell you a tale of two companies and how they handled user demand. One took a hype-based approach, trying to create demand, while the other achieved real demand (and hype) through user insights. Hype-First Failure: Quibi (2020) On its surface, Quibi made perfect sense to investors in 2020. The idea was to create Hollywood-quality ten-minute movies and...
Are you stuck in reactive mode? by Jeff Humble Dear Reader, Some designers spend their whole careers reacting to other people's moves. As a design manager, I remember being in this position. I had to brace myself every Monday morning for some radical change in company direction. We never knew what the new agenda would be, but we knew that it would throw our work into chaos. Sometimes, all it took was for the founder to read a single article to change the company agenda. When a competitor...