01. Welcome to Beyond UX Design

01. Welcome to Beyond UX Design

You’re more than a designer because there’s more to UX than design.

What’s up UX fam? How’s your mom and them? I’d like to introduce myself. My name is Jeremy. My friends call me JMills. My kids call me dad. My wife calls me whatever the hell she wants. And my dog just stares at me funny when he wants to go outside.

I can’t tell you how excited I am to have you join me on this little podcast adventure on which I am about to embark.

My plan for this podcast is to help everyone out there just starting out on their UX journey to avoid some of the pitfalls that I fell for when I first started out nearly 20 years ago. God, it’s crazy to say that out loud. 

The tagline for this show is “You’re more than a designer. Because there’s more to UX than design.”

You might be asking “Jeremy, what the hell are you talking about?” What do you mean by that? I’m glad you asked. Let me explain!

I’ve been mentoring for a while now. It hasn’t been all that long, but in the short time I’ve been meeting with young designers from all over the world, I have noticed a trend. And this is especially true for recent grads, boot camp, or otherwise.

That trend is they are laser-focused on hard skills. Generally speaking, of course.

This manifests itself in a lot of the portfolios I review. I see a lot of case studies that look like, as if they’re checking a box off the list. 

• Interviews. Check. 
• Personas. Check. 
• Journey map. Check.
• Wireframes. Check. 
• Usability study. Check. 

Doing those things are all well and good. But it’s critical as a UX designer to understand how those things result in great experiences for users and why. 

You’re more than a designer!

Here’s what I mean by “you’re more than a designer.” 

In school, books, boot camps, whatever, you’re taught an ideal scenario. A happy path for how design should be done. A certain order of things. We do those things in the right order, and somehow, magically, an app is made. 

But here’s the thing, that is very rarely how things work in the real world. In the real world, pick up where other people left off. And we have to deal with people. A lot of people. And that makes building really great software extremely hard. 

You may have heard some of these stereotypes. The pushy stakeholder with unrealistic expectations. The product manager who can’t say no to the pushy stakeholder. The manager who gives unrealistic deadlines. The blind-as-a-bat QA engineer. The software engineer who just wants to code in the dark alone with a two litre of mountain dew. 

If you’ve run into those stereotypes, the hard skills you’re working to master right now won’t matter one bit. I can promise you. What will matter are all the soft skills we’re going to talk about on this show. 

So in this podcast, we won’t talk about how to craft research studies. Or how to craft personas, or how to craft the perfect wireframes or mockups in Figma or whatever other tool is popular right now. Or design or accessibility best practices. 

We will be talking about all soft skills that help turn those things other into real value for end users. Like how to build great relationships with your team. How to tell great stories. How to influence stakeholders. How to network. How to influence decision-making. How to grow as a leader.  

At the end of the day a beautiful, fancy Figma prototype might be beautiful and amazing, but that design is completely useless if you can’t work with your team to get it built and pushed to production. The soft skills we’re going to talk about on this show will be what helps make that happen, in conjunction with those hard skills. 

So, there is more to UX design than simply doing the research, creating maps, or personas, or creating wireframes. Sometimes we have to be more than designers.

• Sometimes we need to be strategic thinkers. 
• Sometimes we need to be relationship builders.
• Sometimes we need to be storytellers. 
• Sometimes we need to be politicians. 
• Sometimes we need to be students.
• Sometimes we need to be facilitators.
• Sometimes we need to be documentarians. 
• Sometimes we need to be leaders.
• Sometimes we need to be influencers. 
• Sometimes we need to be mentors.
• Sometimes we need to be allies. 
• Sometimes we need to be partners.
• Sometimes we need to be diplomats.

It’s nearly impossible to get the mind-numbing, difficult work of building and releasing high-quality software to users if we’re only focusing on the hard skills and completely ignoring the importance of the soft skills.

In my years of experience, I’ve seen UX teams get a lot more done with soft skills than they ever do with hard skills alone. There is so much more to this job than simply design. We really need to leverage those soft skills if we ever hope to improve the lives of our end users.

I want one thing to be abundantly clear. Those hard skills that make you good at your craft are critical. If you don’t understand the fundamentals, If you don’t understand the rules, the laws, the tools, if you don’t know how to actually do the job, the soft skills won’t help you. Just remember that. 

All those hard skills are important. And lots of other authors and UX thought leaders can help you with all those things. So I don’t think I’ll add a ton to the conversation if I were to go there. I also think I’d basically be repeating stuff from people like Jared Spool, Don Norman, Stephen Gates, Steve Skrug, or any of the other 1,000 UX influencers online. 

I know you have choices

Lastly, I just want to express my heartfelt gratitude for giving this show a chance. I really do appreciate it. 

There are a ton of UX podcasts out there. Some are good. Some are valuable. All of them have something different to say. I know that you have options and I can’t tell you how much it means to me that you are here, listening, hopefully taking a few nuggets of wisdom away and improving how you work. 

I believe very strongly in this idea of an Infinite Game,  the idea that this game of life never ends. There’s no finish line. It’s not a competition. We’re not competing with anyone but ourselves to be better than we were the day before.

So to that end, I’m not competing with any other podcasts. So I hope that you’re also listening to those other shows too. There are more than enough ideas and content to consume. And there is more than enough love to go around. 

Going forward, I hope this show is part of your library of many great tools available out there. I hope this show helps you to learn how to become a truly great, effective, UX professional, that the rest of your team looks to for guidance.

Make sure you like and subscribe

So if all of this sounds like something you’d be into, please make sure to like and subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts. After you’ve listened to a few episodes and you think I’m on to something, leaving a five-star review would be huge and help the show way more than you could imagine. If at some point you feel like you know someone who would get something out of the show, by all means, share it. If you feel like you’re getting something out of the show, please share it on your work slack channel, or LinkedIn, or whenever you get your social media dopamine hit. 

If you ever have any feedback for me, suggestions, honest critiques, things you’d like to hear me talk about, or questions you want me to answer, hit me up at hello@beyonduxdesign.com. 

Find me on LinkedIn. Tell me hi. 

Don’t forget to subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts. And remember, if you think someone you know will get something out of what we’re talking about, please don’t hesitate to share it!

Remember, you’re more than a designer. Because there’s more to UX than design.