It’s folklore to think that UX designers will bring an improvement for users and customers alike in a magic act.

We all know, and the business guys should know since they are owners of their business, that for the user to have a good experience shopping or using a product, processes besides the proper product are so important than the product itself.

Working in an agency, I already heard clients have been alerted by “You need to follow ADA compliance because if you do not, you can be sued”.

Be careful with accessibility it’s not only because of the risk of being sued but nowadays it’s crystal clear the time our society left behind not being inclusive, actually being the opposite of it.

I know that we won’t tell cows and oxen “Please, don’t leave this area”, we put a fence to keep them in. Laws work in a similar way for people that are not able to have ethics by themselves. But, the risk of being sued should be a small thing mentioned from a design agency recommendation.

People should be worried about not empathizing, of not respecting people’s feelings, needs and time. Understanding it, being sued for not offering an inclusive product or service is not a problem to think about.

Design for people includes bringing these points to the whole work process.

Evangelizing is our main mission

Evangelizing teammates, clients, and stakeholders, in general, is the most important work UX designers have to do now.

If I’m going to give suggestions to my clients, I should open their eyes to what their products are and what they should become to satisfy people’s necessities and bring value to society. Even though I will only put my hands on visual material and in a product itself, the concepts and knowledge I used for them can be used for much more and they must be shared.

Don’t make me think
Steve Krug wrote a book with this title that keeps updated in many aspects.

Also, lately, people have been addicted to social media, to check e-mail inbox thousands of times. People receive a lot of advertising. People’s minds are full and walking to burnout.

Why will I make the learning process harder for people?

Creating a design, we should take into consideration ways to reduce the user’s cognitive load. This same concept should be used for all processes in a company. Make things easier.

Users are people and people are moved by emotions
People want to solve their problems, not use your product or service because you're cute. If what you offer can help ease the pain, great!

If I create a nice app’s layout, but during the backend development, the professional didn’t take care of the loading time carefully, users will be upset to wait for so long and the good usability in the design would not be enough!

15% of the world’s population experience some form of disability
You know somebody with a disability, for sure. I know people that only discovered being colorblind after years.

While people with different necessities would not be considered in website development or in the construction of a sidewalk to pass a wheelchair, we will continue excluding a big part of society.

The design team can be very meticulous creating a design for a software interface, but if the marketing team doesn’t reflect all the same concerns and concepts to the marketing material to promote it, only focusing on a stunning visual design but using gray text with a terrible contrast with white background, for example, part of the effort for the project will sink.

The user experience you offer is related to the empathy you developed

If a company wants to improve the quality of its user experience, everybody who works there should be conscious of the importance of treating users carefully.

In a team, not only designers should be attentive to usability, but all the cross-functional teams.

The dev, BA, PM, or any other role should take decisions thinking about how the user will be benefited from the decisions they will take. And this mindset should be transmitted to other teams like marketing, leadership, among others.

We are finally more sensible

The age of people hiding cry and not assuming who they are is passing away — thanks! — and it will reflect in everything we do. Our speeches, the way we have fun, the clothes we wear, how we behave in a group.

Of course, it is already going to the work environment. Guess what? Personal and professional sides walk together. That idea that they are separated was already unmasked and identified as created by someone who supported the robotization of people. One less bullshit to worry about.

Coming back to the main theme of this article. The end-to-end customer experience should take to the user all these improvements in the emotional side we are achieving.

User Experience is not a separate discipline

From the first contact in a social media, in the acquisition process discovering a new environment, passing through an empathic copywriting we use to communicate a simple alert, the smooth interaction for a quick but important process and lastly but not less important, in the direct communication with an attendant in a support area or after-sales.

In all these steps the user will walk, the user experience should be there. And if the UX designer has a real responsibility, it’s not to guarantee that the great usability and accessibility will be concentrated only in the visual part but to bring a more humanized mindset for all people that get in touch and let them know that now people’s necessities will be met.