01. Welcome to Beyond UX Design!

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

What the hell does that mean?

Well, I believe very strongly that there is more to UX design than simply doing the research, creating maps, creating personas, or designing 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.

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.

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