Jason Clauss’ Post

If you'd like to answer some free-form questions, please respond or love react. I'm developing a product-powered service which will make product leaders' job way easier.

Don't mind me. Just doing some market research.

There are many lessons for product design here.

All these tech layoffs? Yeah, there IS a cost to them. If a company lays off value-creators and a stock analyst upgrades the stock price, it's time to lay off that stock analyst.

"That's an edge case" is the mating call of the mediocre product person. Edge cases are usually the most important cases because they include situations in which the user of a product is in some sort of danger. Activities which fall within the envelope of standard use are usually low-risk. However, when the user engages with a product in an atypical way, or encounters atypical circumstances, the likelihood of something bad happening to them goes up. I can't tell you how many times in my career I've had to listen to someone with a bigger shoe size than IQ tell me that something is an "edge case" and so it's "not in the roadmap". And, similarly, I've had to deal with companies who treat my legitimate needs as some sort of curiosity to be ignored despite me contacting them multiple times informing them of the need for a feature. Witness Buffer consistently refusing to implement automated reminders to refresh tokens so that my automated LinkedIn post wouldn't fail. We all know the 80/20 rule, but it's worth reflecting on what it means. Your average basic product "leader" would rather serve the 80% of pinheads who don't take risks, don't do anything interesting, and don't have any need of advanced functionality. But it's the 20% (or 10% even) who will be your loyal customers and they are going to be more demanding. They're going to use your product in more advanced ways. In particular, they will use it in ways you cannot predict beforehand unlike the proles who do the same 3 things every day. But, more importantly, remember that emergencies by definition fall under edge cases. The usability of your product becomes MORE important in these cases, not less. A product of middling usability doesn't cause problems when people are in low-stress situations, especially if people are familiar with it. But the minute someone encounters an unexpected emergency, their cognitive power is decreased by stress, they have to perform unfamiliar tasks, and the consequences of failure are more dire. So, let's bury this useless term once and for all.

It's time we declare independence from the FAANGbros and their own form of taxation without representation. What say you?

We all know that companies have been slashing UX budgets, replacing skilled UX designers and researchers with low-grade bootcamp churnout, Fiverr drones, and all manner of cheap knockoffs. From a crude, smoothbrained standpoint, this decision makes sense. Why do you need good product crew when you don't intend to make a good product? Good product people care about quality. Good quality isn't necessary when you view consumers as expendable. Good product people care about design ethics. Design ethics are a hindrance when your express goal is to harm the consumer for profit. Good product people cost money. And costs are bad when you only care about slashing costs right this second, so you can appease... whom? Short-term investors, of course. Small-minded people whose only goal is to squeeze a profit out of spikes in stock value, the kind of spikes that happen when dimwitted analysts upgrade the value of a stock because the company laid off staff. They love cost cutting and reckless feature bloat because they're quick hits of coke to a company's bottom line, and the short-termers can sell stock at a big gain before it inevitably plummets to new lows. On the other hand, long-term investors see this kind of buffoonery from a company and run for the hills. They're in to win, and they want a stock that will pay off dividends for years to come. This means they want product strategy that see consumers are scarce, non-renewable resources. They realize that, over even the medium-term, treating your customers like crap will drive them off and they won't come back. And their investment will be toast. And, just like those customers, if you drive away long-term investors, they won't come back. They will see what kind of company you are and regard the stock as radioactive. Once they take their money out, they won't ever put it back into your company. But I'm sure you can make up for the loss of those quality investors by attracting a bunch of sleazy hockey stick chasers, right? All you need to do is advertise some cost cuts - maybe layoffs, pay reductions, cut corners - or some lazy money grabs - new features nobody asked for, increased prices, planned obsolescence - and the short-termers will appear in droves. But don't forget, as soon as those hackneyed blunders "pay off", they will sell your stock off in droves. Don't worry, you can get them back though. Just announce more layoffs. So, unless you want to be a pawn on some pump-and-dump scheme, maybe consider not getting rid of your most valuable employees. Maybe.

There's only so much I can say that hasn't already been said about the importance of UX design to businesses. IBM and NASA have already proved the ROI on UX, and they are hardly the only example. And we have plenty of counter-examples where companies who shun UX lose customers or get sued. Sure there are megacorporations who weaponize bad UX to deceive or brainwash users as part of their business model, but you don't get to play that game unless you are a conglomo, and the inevitable fall will be fast, hard, and painful. If you want a well-designed product that serves its users, then there is no getting around the fact that you will have to hire HIGH-END designers. I mean people who merit the title "principal designer" or "design fellow". The kind of people who are equal in rank to PMs but remain as ICs. I don't mean "senior designers" with "3-5 years of experience". I don't mean "unicorns". I mean true UX pros who have been around many blocks. So to anyone who actually cares about having a good product, let me offer you four brief, cogent arguments that you can internalize. Remember this when making a hire. Remember this when posting a job description. Your hires reflect on you as a professional and as a person. High-end designers know a lot. They know principles of cogsci and information theory and behavioral economics that impact the product's design. They can spot potential problems with a design that will cost you in users or liability claims. High-end designers have done this so long that they don't necessarily need an elaborate research and discovery process to produce good results. They PREFER to have it, but in the absence of such a process, they rely on a wealth of patterns and models they can apply from a diverse range of verticals. This means that, even in a "mOvE fAsT aNd BrEak ThInGz" culture, they constantly minimize the damage. High-end designers produce the output of many lower-level designers in the same timeframe. Don't fool yourself into thinking the total cost of cheapo designers will be lower than good ones. Does that approach work with overseas developers? Moreover, you will also spend less on management because the best designers know how to self-manage, meaning your PMs have a lighter workload. High-end designers understand business and technology. They know how to prioritize work in order to maximize ROI, but also how to identify the solution which will maximize user outcomes without harming ROI. And they understand the technical ramifications of their design decisions. They know how to fit the best UX into the fewest man-hours, and know the technical failure points that would ruin the user experience. And that's it. If you're in UX, then keep these arguments in your back pocket. If you're in leadership, then keep this in mind before you think it's wise to cut the UX budget, or get cheap with your hires. So please forward this on if you care about good design. This is as much as I'm going to say on the subject.

Wednesday's post about the UX pyramid drew the ire of a blubbering nincompoop who took issue with my roast of fake UXers. While everything he said in the comments section was a case study in emotional incontinence, I zeroed in on one thing. He didn't like that I was being mean to "others who attempt to provide value". That's a problem. I'd hope that it'd be obvious that "attempting to provide value" and "providing value" aren't the same thing. But if you have a cabinet of participation trophies then you might be unable to spot the difference. Not only are there no points for trying, but if, in trying, you harm others, you not only don't deserve a reward, but you deserve withering criticism. In some cases, you may deserve worse. Isn't it interesting how, when a quack doctor proposes dangerous "remedies" or pushes nonexistent conditions, and they receive a barrage of criticism, even hate, that people don't cry about how the critics are "punching down" BUT when a quack designer proposes dangerous design ideologies, anyone who criticizes them is a meanie poo-poo pants? Why do some in the UX community insist on defending its most useless constituents? I suspect the primary cause is simple: people still think UX—and the tech industry that it services—is all about vapid mobile apps for dating, viral videos, and ordering bespoke organic beard balm. It's like they are completely unaware that EVERYTHING is tech now and that poor design literally ends lives, maybe even whole civilizations. The perceived frivolity of tech led to the preschool mentality so rampant in the UX community. And that mentality in turn led to the proliferation of techbros. These are guys who weren't sufficiently ridiculed so now they think their bad ideas are good. Remember how $120 million was invested in a juicer that needed internet to work. While the world of normal people savaged the Juicero, the community of Silicon Valley infants was so insulated from reality they no longer knew what a bad idea even IS. We're left with a mindset around product design that actively rejects every principle of design that humanity has accumulated over a million years of toolmaking. This brings me to Stockton Rush and the OceanGate disaster. Four people perished thanks to Rush's break with reality. Keep in mind that Rush was also aboard the Juicero of Submarines, meaning that this isn't a run-of-the-mill case of greedy corporate executives trading human lives for profit. This clown truly believed his carbon fiber suppository was well-designed. He ignored literally every submarine design principle to make that POS. Do you need anymore proof the techbro way of life has escaped into the wild? It will come for your medical records. It will come for your infrastructure. It will come for your nation's military. Everything will start falling apart, if not actively attempting to harm its user. And it is then that you'll wish the people who designed this stuff were mocked more and harder. Start now.