UX Firefighter

As a designer, I’ve had an opportunity to join dev teams, at different project stages.

I saw products when the idea was just a thought in someone’s mind.

I saw first shy mockup drafts created by coders, product owners/managers, or even clients.

Development environments, created as a “proof of concept”.

I also saw products, that were just hanging on a thread, when it was more efficient to just re-write them than fix them.

But nothing, I say NOTHING, bugs me more, than a team that doesn’t know that something with their project is wrong, and UX designer shows up because they were thinking about a new “feature”.
Because UX was a hot buzzword that they’ve heard on some conference, or over the coffee in the office.
They don’t really know what they want from a UX designer. They expect them to show up as a fairy godmother, turn the pumpkin into a carriage, and a mouse into a horse.

And here we come. Asking for some “analytics” or research studies. Did you create Persona? A simple survey sent to users at least?
And the team is all like “but no one said there is anything wrong when we showed them”. Showed to who?
To the stakeholders, that bring the ideas along with their money to the table? And what makes you think that users don’t tell behind your back some nasty words about your app? Not everyone has the courage to tell someone, that there is something wrong with something they’ve been very hard working on.

And it’s not like I hold this misinformation of expectations against them.
I’m just sad, that they are disappointed with me, that a snap of the fingers is not enough, to make “this dress” the night before the party. And when I say that Cinderella doesn’t clean thoroughly, they are even more outraged.

But what can I do, when trying to put myself in their user’s shoes, I see messy footprints of ignored usability rules?

MVP. There is always some MVP. Every next one is a set of new features and innovative ideas.
Not everyone stops and thinks about what they did good, and bad in the previous version.

Having a UX designer in the team for the first time, no one expects to hear the alarm. That the enthusiasm of new ideas will be cooled down by the cold stream of “accessibility” “availability” “readability” etc.

Don’t be surprised tho, that by having a hot deadline, the designer might become a firefighter, instead of the architect of your great ideas.
So wake up Cinderella before the Prince runs to another.

~A-bit-frustrated-UX-designer.