It's been about ~8 years that I've been a designer, big companies, small, etc. I am quite tired of the role of a designer. Perhaps I'm bored of it, or the fact that half of my energy is dedicated to explaining designs & duke it out with engineers/pm's, or am using my creative energy for useless stuff. Several roles I'm interested in are pivoting into are ones that are less 'controversial' roles, where the work isn't so subjective and open to everyones feedback: -front-end developer -ux researcher has anyone successfully pivoted into another role? anyone else feeling like this too and have any advise?
Sounds like you need to invest in your communication skills, and so much about the design skill set is having effective storytelling. Many designers discount the importance of it, a brilliant design idea is useless by itself. If your explanation is long-winded, hard to follow, or incorporating too much design-speak, you’re not going to convince anyone. If you still think your idea is brilliant, you’re likely not effectively communicating what’s in your head to others. The best designers excel at communication because they apply the same theories of designing products (imagining how the person on the other side encounter the design work) to telling the story of their design. Clear, succinct, and compelling communication is a key skill to master as a designer. We don’t blame users when they don’t end up taking to the products we’ve designed, and it shouldn’t be different when it comes to getting our teammates excited about our designs. You probably won’t need to have storytelling skills as a developer, but you definitely need it as a UX researcher because their primary role is telling stories through user data and research to convince the team. If you are bad at storytelling as a researcher, your recommendations won’t be implemented.
Can you provide a specific example of effective storytelling?
Sure. Effective storytellers think deeply about what hooks would best get and keep someone’s undivided interest. They consider what is critical to convey upfront, and what details can be saved for later. They use easy to understand language, visuals, storyboards or animations to convey what the outcome of the idea would be. Major questions answered include conveying what the problem is, why we know it’s a problem, why our design solution is the best way to solve that problem, and how we know that it is a success. I find that most teammates aren’t aligned on the fundamentals of the problem, or maybe there’s a disagreement on prioritization of problems to solve, or its scope. I see lots of examples of bad storytelling in many design portfolio presentations during interviews. I get lost in the details, I don’t understand what’s happening, or the context is not set up in a way that makes the design convincing.
Go to a company where you don’t have to fight so much. FEs and researchers certainly aren’t immune to the stuff you’re complaining about.
You can try contracting so you won't be emotionally invested in the work you do. At least not as much. Just deliver what is asked and go home. I can't do this because I need job security as I have dependents and obligations.
UX research is amazing but rarely gets the respect it deserves. You'll be advocating for research that no one uses or misunderstands.