Overview

The word “talent,” is thrown around a lot in our industry. We describe designers as talented when we want to say they’re good at what they do. We celebrate talented designers when they bring something new and fresh to the table. We reward talented designers by…forgetting about them?

If you weren’t expecting that last line, you’re not alone.

Today, I want to share with you how to ensure your staying power in UI/UX, and why “talent” will almost never beat the consistent application of battle-tested tactics.

The trouble with talent

Show me a “talented” person now who’s pushing themselves really hard to stay competitive, and I’ll show you a burned out husk in about ten years. In fact, I’ll bet you 10:1 that the lion’s share of most talented people never actually make it where they want to go.

They go far don’t get me wrong, but they never actually get there.

→ See the problem with talent alone is just that: talent is unreliable and fades with time. It’s shoveling against the tide, fighting gravity, and eventually if fails to keep up with demand.

Look at anyone with talent across their lives and you’ll see a consistent pattern: they started off naturally gifted, they grew their talents, and then just like that, they were irrelevant.

Why? Why would something like this happen? Surely a talented designer will always be valued for their talent, right? Sadly no, and we’re about to learn why; enter The Seneca Effect.

The Seneca Effect

One of the most dangerous natural laws that you’ll ever run into as a designer is The Seneca Effect. Bar-none we’ve seen this effect take out more established and up-and-coming designers than almost any other factor you’ll face in your career.

As-defined:

The Seneca effect, or Seneca cliff or Seneca collapse, is a mathematical model proposed by Ugo Bardi to describe situations where a system’s rate of decline is much sharper than its earlier rate of growth.

In plain language, this means that talent will only ever get you so far before the value of your talent alone starts to fade, and the reliability of your talent for your success starts to dwindle.

Where talent fails, tactics prevail

Here’s where things get interesting: talent, generally speaking, requires having a high-degree of mental flexibility, meta-cognition within your domain, and models that you’ve created which allow you to apply old techniques in new ways.

However, you’ll notice that talents aren’t actually what get the job done: it’s those approaches and techniques which the “talent” is picking, choosing, modulating, and applying to the various situations.

What if I told you there was another path to apply those same techniques without the damaging effects of relying on talent? Enter tactics.

Pride goes before the fall: why tactics prevail

Where talent is a facet of someone’s personality and skillset, a tactic is an imperative, packaged approach that can be used by anyone who understands it to get the job done.

Let’s look at the difference between a talented usability researcher and a tactical usability researcher.

• A talented researcher has been told they’re talented, knows they are talented, has internalized that they are talented, and will test users like a “talented” researcher. The talented researcher will then analyze the research like a talented researcher, and give their talented opinion on their talented research.
• A tactical researcher, on the other hand, will employ every known efficient and effective means of research they have in their arsenal until they garner tactically-sufficient data. They will then use every tactic they have that is applicable to rip the data apart, systematically, and determine an appropriate course of action.

As you can see: talent is implicit, tactics are explicit. Talent is biased, tactics are impartial. Talent is a matter of opinion of output, tactics can be tested and prioritized based on contextual efficacy.

Talent belongs to a person as an attribute, but tactics can be used, applied, and improved on by everyone, because while “talent” can’t be taught, tactics can.

→ And that’s the best part about tactics: the more people use them, improve them, and apply them, the better they become.

Create & improve your UI/UX playbook

Put me in a room with your most talented designer and an middling designer with a book full of winning tactics, and I can already tell you who’s gonna win.

It’s not the one who knows what, but the one who knows when and how that’s going to ultimately have the staying power in this game, so we’re going to cover exactly that.

How to improve your tactics

Instead of trying to work on becoming more talented or “improving yourself,” look at your approaches, your methods, and your tactics first and foremost.

• One of my very favorite things to do is audit my approaches against highly-regarded books in the industry like About Face, and Refactoring UI to make sure that my tactics are as robust as possible. This industry is constantly changing, and you want to make sure you have a deep bag of tricks to deal with whatever comes your way.
• Moreover, to maintain proper technical expertise, it’s important to refer to documentation such as Apple’s HIG, Material Design standards, and best practices on interaction design.
• Lastly, I like to actively look at the design trends, pick them apart, and establish what’s going to stay vs what’s going away as fast as humanly possible, and this is normally done by checking the feasibility of their implementation. To clarify: don’t look at Dribble, look at Mobbin. Don’t look at theoretical apps, look at real apps.

None of these will necessarily make you a talented designer, but that’s not the point, and it never should be. The point of study, practice, and execution is to make you a tactical designer.

In summary: don’t worry about being talented. You don’t need to be. Know your tactics, focus on being tactical, and your success will speak for itself.