Empathy maps, personas, journey maps, design sprint materials, etc.—in my 10 YOE, I can count on one hand the number of times I’ve felt like creating these artifacts has been worth the effort. Rather, talking with users, diving deeply into their problems and needs, and forcing myself to communicate my thoughts/findings in concise writing has always seemed like it’s worked best. Sometimes I still feel like an impostor though b/c I’ve known so many designers passionately committed to process and artifact creation. Does anyone else feel this way? What am I missing? PS—I’m definitely not talking about all artifacts , especially those resulting from quantitative research #design #ux #research
I feel you!
I used bunch of UX artifacts when I was in college but after entering the workforce, I realized there's no time to do them because the environment is fast-paced
Totally my experience as well. Who has time?
Like the OP said, agency has to do this so that the clients can feel the worth the money they pay to the agency. If not, there is no time to do empathy mapping for every feature we design for.
100% agree but I’ve found it’s not really necessary to spend time on all that stuff unless you want to, and there’s a always someone who wants to so I’m happy to let them do it. I’ve never felt expectation to use any particular artefact, it’s all just tools to help us articulate ideas and learnings, but a lot of that you can just say when you need to back up a hypothesis behind a design.
You should use whatever artifact gets the job done to communicate the thing you need everyone to understand. Sometimes images and annotations and lines help with immensely with that, sometimes not.
I couldn't agree more. I'm self-taught so I never learned how to do any of these things, and have never, ever needed to. I've only seen a handful of designers actually do any of these, now that I think about it. It's a waste of time in my opinion.
Agreed. Also 10 YOE. Never used them.
I think creating personas are great for knowledge transfer and dissemination!
They do have their uses. But I think it’s v easy to go overboard in adding content to them that really doesn’t serve a purpose
This is golden! Forced artifacts are the worst. I’ve never really created artifacts because I wanted to. It was always because my manager wanted them or I needed something to better explain my portfolio. It is a constant stress to make artifacts only to show you are a good designer. Being able to articulate your thoughts in writing has worked the best so far.
I have always thought of artifacts as conversation starter pieces rather than they being 'artifacts' which leads us to believe that these should be done and final.
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Amen brother/sister! Those who do this, may also do it as a artifact for their portfolio.
Good point. I also wonder if it’s something that comes from agency life? As in the need to be presenting artifacts to clients?
Can be. One other way all these could help is to consolidate known assumptions or facts.