Most of the time, a broken user experience has little to do with the design or implementation of the UX itself. Scrape the surface of even the smallest problems, and you’ll usually find:
- A broken product
- A broken organization
- A broken set of priorities
- Some combination of the above
All too often, our job as UX professionals isn’t to make something good even better. No, it’s to take something which is fundamentally broken — for the reasons noted above — and to try to hide that problem from users in the hopes of preventing further damage.
So here is a plea to companies, organizations or even individuals who want to build better user experiences: make sure your product works, your organization is aligned, and your priorities are in order before you set to work trying to improve your UX. Only then is true success possible.
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Let me know what you think on Twitter: @mmcwatters.
