In a tech landscape defined by high volumes and breakneck evolution, UX designers that stand out are those who refuse to settle. While it can be tempting to crank out work to close job tickets, design teams who rush risk sacrificing both quality and digital experience at the altar of pressing deadlines.
Contemporary designers face a number of challenges. They must understand consumer preferences while harnessing the power of a growing number of tools. Consumers expect their frequently used apps and e-commerce sites to work flawlessly. Simple, clear, efficient and easy-to-use design will ensure they keep coming back.
Justin Boyce is the director of UX at eClinical Solutions, a data platform serving life sciences companies worldwide. He knows that staying close to the user and collaborating with his colleagues will bring the best results.
“As I work on multiple fronts to expand and enhance our UX discipline, I am reminded that I am not the sole arbiter of creativity,” Boyce said. “By bringing my own expertise to the table, embracing the collaborative nature of the work and encouraging the creativity of my colleagues, I am able to push the envelope and create truly great user experiences.”
Built In Boston heard from Boyce and two other area design leaders about what it takes to stay curious, learn new skills and keep user interface and user experience designs from getting stale.
eClinical Solutions leverages a clinical data platform that empowers sciences companies to access and analyze all information from one centralized location.
If you feel like your UI/UX design work is becoming stale, where do you turn to for inspiration on the job?
When I feel stuck designing an experience, I reach out to the people I'm designing for. By observing their behavior and listening to how they experience the product or service, I can gain insights that inform my design decisions. These findings can also be shared with my fellow product team members to build a shared understanding of the problem and leverage our collective expertise to breathe new life into our product's experience.
How do your colleagues inspire you to continue pushing the envelope creatively?
Our UX department is growing, and there is a lot of excitement about building a great user experience. The product team was traditionally made up of engineers and product managers, so the building out of the UX discipline has been welcomed with open arms. This enthusiasm has led to my colleagues involving me in many initiatives across the organization.
Share an example of a recent project where you broke with typical convention.
I believe that good user experience design is not always about breaking conventions or inventing something new. Instead, it is often about working with what is already in place and making sure that it follows best practices and is delightful. Conventions and best practices are important, but they should not be followed blindly. At the same time, when a UI pattern becomes insufficient, it's better to improve it than to replace it with something new.
For example, our platform had a convention of using tabs to represent individual products. However, as the platform grew and more products were added, this UI pattern became insufficient. I worked with my colleagues to implement a menu system that would improve the experience of navigating the platform and make all of the products visible, even those that were hidden away because of the limitations of the tab UI pattern.
Breaking a norm is not always about looking for ways to shake things up, but rather staying ahead of identifying those conventions that are no longer serving the user to their fullest. By working with existing best practices, we can efficiently build delightful experiences that meet the needs of our users.
Breaking norms is not always about shaking things up but identifying conventions that are no longer serving the user.”
Hi Marley is a digital communications platform built for the insurance industry.
If you feel like your UI/UX design work is becoming stale, where do you turn to for inspiration on the job?
First I ask: Is my design work stale, or am I just too close to it? Do I need to take a break and focus elsewhere? Stepping away from work and getting outside, going for a walk or visiting creative sources like museums are great ways to recharge creative energy. It's also helpful to foster non-work creative outlets like painting, writing or music.
If my work truly feels stale, collaboration is often the best path to inspiration. Be open to suggestions and get some fresh perspectives. The best feedback is from users, but if you can't get their input, go to a subject matter expert that knows them well or a colleague who isn't as close to the work as you are. Sometimes all you need is fresh eyes to point something out or get you unstuck.
Collaboration is often the best path to inspiration.”
It’s often helpful to look at examples of other works that match a similar pattern or problem, even ones from a different industry. Just make sure you use them as sources of inspiration to help you achieve something that speaks intimately to your users' needs. It must be true to them.
Remember that adaptability is one of your strongest assets. If something isn't working, keep trying other things until you feel inspired again.
How do your colleagues inspire you to continue pushing the envelope creatively?
Have you heard of Ubuntu? Ubuntu roughly means "I am, because we are." It's been translated into sports, business practices and even pop culture. Ubuntu is one of Hi Marley's core values. We are one team, and we succeed and fail together. Right now, we have a relatively small UX & Design team, but we have a lot of very supportive colleagues that understand our industry well and bolster our growing team with the spirit of Ubuntu.
As a startup committed to making insurance lovable, we must continually seek improvements, explore breakthroughs in technologies like AI and evaluate our blind spots to stay ahead of the curve. Sometimes this manifests in being asked to design something completely new or to improve upon work that isn't delighting our users. But even when facing the most challenging problems, there's no shortage of colleagues offering ideas and suggestions that help keep the creative wheels turning and our team constantly improving.
Lastly, a big part of our culture is empowerment, accountability and recognition. These values help us grow where we need, stand for what we believe and know when we're exceeding.
Share an example of a recent project where you broke with typical convention.
We continuously strive to balance what's best for our users with available resources and time constraints, UX best practices and technical necessities. We also have to be very adaptable. What might be right for our users today might not be right for them tomorrow.
UX best practices are not always one-size-fits-all either. With Design Thinking and most UX practices, there are different methods that yield different results. It's perfectly acceptable to examine which methods apply to your current work and which don't. Examples might include choosing between moderated and unmoderated user testing or different approaches to brainstorming a problem statement. In the end, you're advocating for your users, making decisions that are best for them, rather than adhering to a rigid framework.
Dawn Foods is a bakery manufacturer and distributor with its Digital Innovation Hub in Boston.
If you feel like your UI/UX design work is becoming stale, where do you turn to for inspiration on the job?
I subscribe to newsletters and emails from retailers and brands. They are often at the forefront of UI/UX design. I turn to articles and videos that talk about the trends in the UX/UI design world, such as on Medium and interaction-design.org. I also join UX communities on Slack.
I subscribe to newsletters from retailers and brands — they are often at the forefront of UI/UX design.”
How do your colleagues inspire you to continue pushing the envelope creatively?
Aside from creating net new designs, my team challenges me to rethink how to design an experience or solution. Just because a design is live doesn’t mean we’re done — our team is constantly looking to optimize and improve.
Sometimes I am approached with unexpected issues, and we must be strategic about how we address them. I love hearing ideas on solutions from my colleagues. They inspire me to solve the problem from multiple perspectives versus just looking at the issue from one point of view.
