Why I Quit UX

hey there my name is Travis casab and I started as a ux researcher seven years ago and I just now know what ux is and what ux isn't and I've concluded that ux isn't going to ultimately get me where I've wanted to go so in this video I'm going to explain why I pivoted out of ux and what I'm pursuing now and I hope to provide Clarity for people who are challenged with the same doubts that I was and hopefully provide Clarity faster for you all [Music] clear this video is not meant to disparage ux at all or even discourage people from getting into the field ux is something that captivated me especially in the first several years and it's this unlikely combination of technology and creativity it allows for Creative people to get into technology and that's a beautiful Gateway that I would not want to damage so let's start with what a ux job is good for a ux job will provide you with a good work-life balance it will be a laid back work environment most likely most likely a remote work situation go into the office if you need to wear whatever you want you probably won't have a boss that micromanages you and it's a great salary relative to the other jobs on the job market but now let's transition to what ux isn't if you expect more from ux like you want to come up with and build new products from scratch you want to have creative control over product design and the product roadmap and you want to capture the monetary value that you create a path towards you money then ux job is not for you this is more in the realm of tech entrepreneurship and not in what a ux job will be able to give you so let's now break down each of these three things so the first thing that a ux job cannot give you is the ability to come up with and build new products from scratch the first part of this is that it's difficult to come up with new product ideas and ux research is not going to do this for you this was the biggest misconception I had when I first joined the field was that ux research was this systematized way to come up with new product ideas but this is not the case ux research is good for validating product concepts for understanding how users work their pain points and then also conducting usability tests but there's something that needs to come before in order to have new product ideas just think that you wouldn't even know what users to talk to until you have some sort of semblance of the type of product that you're going for so this is why I say that ux research alone will not lead you to new product ideas you need to start with something before this and I'm not going to prescribe how to do that because I'm not qualified to do this but but I'm just here to tell you that ux research alone will not give you this and the second part of this is that even if you do come up with new features and new product ideas you're not going to have the time or the space in order to execute and build them you were hired for a specific reason you were likely hired for a specific product and the business is not going to let you take the time on the side to creatively come up with new product ideas they hired you for a reason and this brings me into the next point the next thing that a ux job will not be able to give you is full creative control over your product designs and the product roadmap so thinking back to what I just said before the business hired you for a specific product they wouldn't have had the business justification to spend the money on paying you your salary unless they had some idea of what you were going to come in and work on and so they likely are already have a product or product line that they know that you're going to work on and this product its roadmap is already pretty much set in stone it's very unlikely that you're going to come in and be able to influence the product roadmap very much the reality is that most ux jobs are about getting requirements from upper management these are the business requirements and delivering designs based on those requirements there's very little bottom-up fundamental ux research or creative exploration that happens in order to come up with new products and build them from the ground up or new features in your existing product and also unless you're in an emerging field where you're designing new use cases that have never been done before then you're really not going to feel that you've you're scratching your creative itch and you're pushing the envelope on things so rather than being graded on your creative export Nation you're more going to be graded on efficiency and how well you can recycle existing design patterns so let me give you a couple examples of what I mean by emerging Fields versus stable Fields some examples of stable fields are the iPhone for example and the iOS from zero to one there was a ton of creative exploration and design Innovation that was happening but in the past decade how much has the iOS really changed and just think that if you're a ux designer at Apple you're really not working on Super interesting super new things the iOS has looked the same basically for the past decade and has had the same sort of design mental models that it's always had another example is websites you know 95 of websites all look the same to one another and so let's say that you're designing an e-commerce website will all of those design patterns have already been done before adding things to the cart cards that show the different products these things have already been done and so I'm sure there are some small tweaks that you can make and some people might get fulfillment out of that but by and large you're really not going to be creating anything truly new now on the other hand if we think about emerging fields and we take the Apple example think about spatial Computing and Apple's just releasing the Apple Vision Pro and so it's this new spatial Computing Paradigm where I'm sure that's a very interesting space to be in as a ux designer right now there are new paradigms that are being built right now from zero to one that are going to lay the path for the next 10 to 20 years of spatial Computing and this is why I built uxstartupjobs.com this is to connect ux designers with emerging technology fields and Cutting Edge startups in Silicon Valley because I think this is ultimately where you want to be as a creative technologist you want to be in an emerging field where things are going from zero to one like web 3 like AI like Renewables biotechnology and Healthcare etc etc and I've even seen some positions on ux start upjobs.com say founding ux designer which is incredibly interesting position to me it means that it's a seed stage startup they have this brand new idea and they're wanting a ux designer to come in at the ground level and be also even more exciting is that you're going to get Equity if you join and you're a founding member and this brings me into the third point that I want to discuss at your ux job you will not capture the value that you create designing and building software is one of the most high leverage things you can do but all of the value is going to accrue to your employer because they've taken the risk in funding the product development in paying your salary they own the product idea so they have full equity in the company and the product and you do not you are compensated with a flat salary so for example if you design something that gets built into a product that reaches millions of users and creates billions of dollars worth of value again you are just going to receive your flat salary and the company is going to capture all of that value and while a ux salary is great as we've already discussed relative to other jobs on the market it's not going to get you to you money in the first 10 to 15 years of your career it's going to take several decades for you to save up you money assuming that you are investing it properly okay so let's summarize what a ux job cannot do and will not do for you you will not come up with new product ideas and build them from scratch you will not have creative control over the product design and product roadmap and finally you will not capture the value that you create as a ux designer the only thing that can give you these things is Tech entrepreneurship and this is what I'm focused on now and of course there are downsides to entrepreneurship you have to take the risk of your time and perhaps money to execute and build these products and this is after you've overcome the seemingly gargantuan task of coming up with a successful product idea in the first place however if you do decide to pursue entrepreneurship the good news is that you're not far off as a ux designer or as somebody who's interested in ux design you're already steeped in technology you know how to retain and attract users with good user experiences and you're already used to collaborating with developers who build the products so these are my conclusions after seven years in the field if you're in ux I'd really like to know how much my thinking and experiences align with yours and if you disagree with what I'm super happy to get this conversation started and I think that this crowdsourcing of knowledge is going to help the people who are early on in the field and who are considering ux going into it so thank you all for watching

Channel: Travis Kassab

Views: 49,083

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Id: NJbTER11-kQ

Length: 10min 32sec (632 seconds)

Published: Tue Sep 12 2023