I get asked, a lot, “to look at this from a user experience point of view”.

Because what else would I do? Look at it from a user’s non-experience? A user’s unexperience? A non-user’s experience. Maybe on that last one. But a user experience?

Isn’t everything we do when we make something contributing to the user experience? Isn’t that the team’s work, collectively? When someone engages/interacts with whatever we make - website, ad, brochure, video game, cash machine interface, product, service, utility, thing - that is a user experiencing. That is their user experience. We are all, collectively, always designing, always contributing to, and must always be mindful of the user experience. Looking at it from a user experience point of view is the team’s work.

If someone asks you to “Look at this from a user experience point of view” they’re approaching it as a function, a role, a task, a part, some thing in the approach to the job.

Make sure they know user experience is the job, user experience is in the delivery, and our strategy is delivering.

And if I was looking at it from a ‘user experience point of view’: isn’t that “user research” anyway?


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