UX Design In Software

In my last post I introduced the factory. I've stopped short of talking about the factory for quite some time because it is not sufficient to know there is a factory in order to understand software. Engaging with the concepts of commoditisation, ownership, and primitives is essential to answer the big questions that society repeatedly asks that relate to how software is produced.

When I conceptualised this framework I was working from an engineering perspective, but if the model of software as bespoke digital manufacturing is a good one it should not only allow us to understand engineering, but other stakeholders as well.

Enter UX design.

UX designers, like many professions involved in software development, have long had the misfortune of having to work very hard to justify the value of their work. When people talk about UX design they are often talking about empathising with users and forming strategies to do things like minimise cognitive overload and communicate clearly what is happening (and can happen) in a digital system, and where practical, why. Much of what I have read and heard about the subject carries a certain warmth (that is perhaps missing when people write about finance, for instance) and you can feel a genuine expression to make digital experiences more positive for people.

There is not a universal appreciation for the field. There are ideological reasons that relate to resource allocation, and there are also more practical considerations. We might have a basket of best practices available to us, but how do we really know that our users, that may be anywhere from tens of people to hundreds of millions of people, are thinking the same way that we think when we are looking at the same thing?

This is generally where research enters the picture. In contemporary software it is a norm to collect information about every button tap, every page view, in order to understand how people are really using software, which then helps drive either additional investigation or more immediate decisions about future investment. We might have big plans (e.g. many years into the future) to further develop a particular feature of a software application, only to find that after collecting some data about usage, that a very small minority have ever utilised it.

When I wrote about the factory I briefly related the roles of users and UX designers to it. If you accept the model of software as digital manufacturing, that UX designers create the facades to machines that are operated by users, who are both customers and workers, then you must conclude that the work that UX designers and researchers perform is very important on first-principles.

If you remain unconvinced that users are workers in the factory, consider what has been developing in retail stores across the globe where "checkout operators", formerly employees of retail stores, have at least been partially replaced by a semi-automated machine that facilitates "self-checkout". The role of the employee has been replaced with a new division of labour between the customer and a (physical) machine.

Until next time.