Could it be easy? - 100 Days of Writing, Design & Emotions

Story:

I set myself a goal to build a custom portfolio website. I wanted to use the UX process from research to insights and testing.



It was a beautiful idea.



Unfortunately, it was also an overwhelming idea as I had a short deadline to complete the process, build the portfolio, create the assets required, learn more about UX while doing a short self-paced course and get a new job in the next 8 weeks. On top of my 9-5 job and two side-projects.



You, dear reader, might see how overly ambitious the above goal was. I, sadly, didn't. I'd built the habit of setting overly ambitious goals and killing myself in the process of achieving them. It was either achieve the goal or feel miserable.



A burn-out later, and a weekend tinged with the nightmarish quality of a bad trip, I was showering and the thought, ‘how can we make this easier?' entered my mind.



The solution? Use a website builder to temporarily host a portfolio. Then I could achieve my goal of building a portfolio and landing a job in the time I'd set.



I could feel the relief in the thought but a part of me resisted. A portfolio builder felt like cheating. It took a coaching session and two more bouts of uncontrolled crying before I could see something had to give. Upon closer inspection, the fear holding was, 'if I take the easy route now then I‘ll never be able to do this difficult thing.’



It took a 3rd party pointing out the issue wasn't that I couldn't build a portfolio but the sheer number of goals under the deadline I'd set. The words created a tiny opening in my mind and helped me realised I could take the easier path without the fear that I'd given up on the goal.



From today on wards, when I envision my projects and goals I'll have 3 imaginary toggles in mind:

→ number of goals

→ difficulty

→ time

Burn out happens when the toggles are all pushed to near maximum:



On the other hand, a healthy, sustainable approach to work looks like:



Only two toggles can be high at any one time.



I'll still make the hand-built website but now I've decreased the speed (increased the amount of time I have) by going down the site-builder route. Now, I can sustain the level of difficulty and number of moving parts.



Takeaway:

How does this relate to what I learnt in UX today?



Research

I'm currently studying the UX research process and it's clear that ease and efficiency will make or break you(r) research period. Whether you have a 6 months research deadline or a 2 week sprint, it helps to ask: what would this look like if it were easy?



Easy =/= bad.

Easy = Efficient. Effective & Creating more time for testing and iteration.



Also, other honourable mentions:

• content should be easy to consume

• users tasks should be easy to accomplish

• the product or website should be easy to parse, visually



In application:

The beautiful side-effect of going through this process is the series you're currently reading. I was waiting to create a digital garden but with the number of projects I had running it was difficult to find the time. After I decided to shift my website, I realised I could also use reading supply as a temporary digital garden. It doesn't have to be perfect, it just has to be a start. A place to share rougher writing and a journey.



I'm glad I did. I'm one post in and I'm already having conversations with people who can relate.



Lesson 2 in UX: make it easy.