I have written before about the importance of resilience for UX practitioners, especially those working in UX-immature environments.

As a follow-up to that, I’m now looking specifically at personal and professional meaning and its role in creating and maintaining resilience in the face of ongoing workplace challenges.

What does UX mean to you?

No, I’m not going to write yet another definition of the “what is UX” variety. Here I’m talking about what working in UX means to you as an individual practitioner.

Most people work in UX for a reason. For many (and I’d hope most) it’s the desire to make things suck less for users, getting to understand loads of interesting things about humans and generating elegant, usable and accessible designs.

It’s different for everyone of course, but unless you’re just in it for the money, there’s probably some passion that brought you to the craft.

Why is ‘meaning’ important?

How an individual perceives stress (cognitive appraisal) is generally stated to be a result of their individual genetics combined with their developmental experience (how they were raised and how handling adversity was modelled by carers).

For some people, therefore, a small amount of adversity is overwhelming, for others not so much. But for most people being in extremely stressful situations for any length of time will lead to high levels of stress.

From Viktor Frankl to Raphael Rose, philosophers and psychologists have recognised the role of individual meaning and purpose in mitigating individual stress, even in highly difficult situations. Whether that’s purpose from your role in society, within your family group or some personal mission — having a greater focus outside of your own immediate suffering can in turn, reduce that suffering.

The risk of losing focus

When it comes to your UX life, it can be hard to hold on to the North Star of your UX passion (your meaning and purpose) when you spend your days repeatedly explaining basic concepts, fighting against research budget cuts, having evidence ignored, working on vanity or UX theatre projects, or being told “UX is the easy bit”.

It is tiring to fight all the time in any working environment, but even more so in UX where for many passionate practitioners, this is their vocation — and their effectiveness at successfully producing user-centred solutions is closely tied to their sense of self.

If your sense of self and identity is being beaten down every day, why would you keep caring?

What this looks like

I have worked with many practitioners over the years who have shown signs of loss-of-meaning when working in a challenging UX environment. At times I’ve been one of them. Whether midweights or leadership, the signs of impending meaningless are all the same:

• Increased negative outlook
• Inability to find humour in the face of adversity
• An increase in sarcasm far beyond that of your standard UX person (and that’s saying something..)
• The belief or expression that something or someone cannot be fixed
• Giving in quickly to a stupid or dangerous suggestions
• No longer caring about learning or understanding new things
• No longer caring about outcomes

Finding and renewing meaning

When these signs appear, there are still things you can do to bring yourself out of the funk of UX meaningless. Or if you are a leader reading this, to redirect your team or team member.

1. Be a philosopher, not a victim

It is very easy to slip into the ‘victim’ mindset when your work or professional integrity is constantly under assault. I know because I’ve fallen into this trap before myself. However if you remain in the ‘victim’ mindset then you have no sense of agency. Ergo no power. And powerlessness is hopeless and depressing; so let’s not do that.

Instead consider your situation as a philosopher with the ability to think through a problem — and find a way to reframe how you think about the system or organisation within which you are operating. Keep reading.

2. Be like the Stoics

Now that you are a philosopher, it’s time to discover the Stoics. Within Stoicism, there is a practice of literally thinking through unpleasant events that have not yet happened and asking yourself at each step of this unpleasant event “what would I do next”.

Now this initially sounds fairly miserable, but the theory is that this practice makes you more prepared for the inevitable life challenges, both practically and emotionally.

This works just as well for thinking through work-place stupidities. If someone refuses to acknowledge user needs, won’t let you present findings to a client, wants to JFDI a design — whether you’ve been through them before or not, you can think a few steps ahead for yourself and imagine ways you might combat those assaults or barriers. Well done. You now have your sense of agency back.

3. Make it a challenge not a crisis

This one is very much easier-said-than-done however, if you can take the issue in front of you as a challenge to resolve (because now you are a highly equipped Stoic), it can increase your motivation to deal with it rather than running away or collapsing.

4. Choose a focus for your meaning

Think about what really means the most to you. Is it that methodologies should be robust? Then make a plan for educating and implementing some. Is it to have the user’s represented and acknowledged? Then think about ways to bring stories and quotes to life. But whatever you do, don’t try and boil the ocean and do it all at once. That way madness lies.

Or maybe it’s not about your workplace at all, but contributing to the wider UX community that will be your focus. Whatever it is, pick one thing that brings you the greatest professional satisfaction.

5. Be realistic (and compassionate!)

Once you have your focus, make a realistic plan based on the level of resistance you are facing, and the resources at your disposal. And if you fail (because you probably will, at least initially) then be compassionate to yourself.

I’ve mentored many solo UXers fighting an entire organisation on everything at once. It’s not possible. You will crash and burn and the organisation will barely notice your demise.

Be kind to yourself, even if (and especially if) no one else is.

Knowing when to get out

I remember back when I first got into UX, having that crazy obsessive “I must learn everything” stage (which I now enjoy seeing in the young’uns), where I had to fight to even get allowed in to the industry.

(this was a very long time ago btw..).

I also remember at that time reading a leading practitioner’s “I’m done with this sh1t, I quit” post on social media and I just couldn’t fathom it. Why would anyone ever want to leave this wonderful world of UX?

Why would anyone ever want to leave this wonderful world of UX?

Now, as I lumber towards the middle age of my career, I can see easily how that could happen and not just for seasoned practitioners.

UX is hard work, even if everyone and everything in your organisation is not against you. If you have really reached the point of no return, with all the signs listed above and none of the desire or ability to rediscover your UX meaning, then absolutely it’s time to have a career pivot and go do something completely different.

But until that time, please keep fighting as hard as you can for the bits of UX meaning you can find.