Off the Cuff Clarity Can Feel Accidental Even After Preparing

Journaling earlier today I was thinking about UX as a mindset and how I sometimes totally nail the pitch when I'm describing it to friends and family. Which I did a good job describing the project to relatives who stopped by for a socially distant while wearing masks visit. Also: both Kate and I had our first of two vaccinations and days away from our second doses.

So we're visiting and eventually I share what I've been up to, including that UX mindset pitch.

Finding clarity without having planned for it at that moment.

It's not trivial to get that brief description to be both clear and useful and immediately here when I want to say it. Describing something with all the feelings and ideas I have about spreading the culture and practice of UX to business, engineering, and art. It's a whole crowd of ideas and emotions.

Some days I find the words in the moment. Something about the being there and immediacy. I'm only just getting that feeling from writing in recent weeks. Writing to capture knowledge and process to repeat a practice doesn't have to feel clinical. That's something I've known by seeing it in practice but not something I've been able to fully grasp in writing.

I think this comes from being just ready enough to try, feeling the gentle creative pressure of the moments need, and playful enough to jump.

It's a good feeling when it works and with enough practice it works well enough often enough for me. But it's not a magial infinite library of things I can do this with, only a few things I've practiced a lot. It works when I'm preparing, practicing, then sometimes performing. Those leaps of clarity come from both the earlier work and the spark of performing it.

Here's my attempt at reproducing that pitch performance.

UX mindset is a big deal to me because it invites and encourages everyone who leads or serves with an organization that mostly uses top-down approaches to building things, to see and act on how it's possible to start making decisions differently. You don't need to be an industry leading expert to decide to include others experiences in how you decide things.

That's the biggest change with so much new possibility. To go from not valuing learning from your audience because it's intimidating or inconvenient to then require it. And then start being affected by what you learn.

To become awesome at it will take ongoing effort and willingness to keep learning and being affected by what you learn. But you don't have to be awesome at it to begin the learning.

That's the book I am building a pitch about. To encourage people and teams to see, value, and cross that threshold of learning with their audience.