Why UX Design? 100 Days of Design, Writing & Emotions

Design:

"Why product design?"

The question I've been asked the most when I share that I'm moving into UX/UI design.



The answer: UX design requires a perfect blend of my favourite skills:

• social - especially empathy

• research (+ writing)

• design





These skills are what I spend 60% of time thinking about or using. If I combine UX with emotional well-being, mental health or personal development then my career would become what I currently do in my free time. And isn't that the dream?



It's such an obvious right-fit for me that my own question is: why did it take me so long to realise?



1] Well, it's easier to connect the dots looking backwards.

2] But also, I'd be lying if I didn't mention that for years I had a distant desire to move into design but let fear hold me back. A part of me didn't believe I could become a designer. Design was too close to art and my history with art was too triggering.

3] I thought my dream career was, ‘come up with ideas and have other people execute them.’



Point 3 was remedied over the last year, when I got to experience my dream first hand as a creative lead (creative director). After a year of dreaming up ideas and working with other creatives to bring them to life I realised I didn't enjoy what I've come to describe as ‘handlessness’. It's a head-based, mental experience - creating work beyond my own hands.



Now a days, I find myself more interested in being outside of my head and in my body. I want to make with my hands. To quote an artist



"Make it with your hands. So you can know what it takes, but you can also know when to stop. Know when it hurts."

There are many other reasons, like my life-long love of technology, my religious downloading of the latest tools and apps to test their experience and 101 other hints I could list. Handle-ness, embodiment and natural fit are the most important to me at the moment.



Why are you in design?



Emotions:

Still rocky. Finding it hard to concentrate on much with the BLM protests happening across the US and now Europe. Lots of triggering from seeing the social media conversations happening around the topic. More disillusionment when I don't see my intellectual heroes put their brain power to an issue so close to heart. I'm thankful for Anne-Laure's community and the space she set up to discuss these topics.



Life and work balance is a myth because life is work and work is life, and this spilling over is a prime example of how the emotions from the two invisible categories flow into each other.



The daily writing acts as an anchor. Stability. I'd recommend it.