15 Lessons From 15 Years In UX

Jesse James Garrett, co-founder of the strategy and design consultancy Adaptive Path, reflects on 15 years as a user experience professional in this talk from Smashing Conference in New York in 2014. He covers what it really takes to deliver great UX work, from working with teams and managing stakeholders to breaking out of a creative rut and finding innovative solutions to design problems.

His 15 lessons: go broad, because solutions in one area apply elsewhere. Go deep by immersing yourself in the client’s problems and context and filling the wall with artefacts. Go for a walk, since a change of environment brings a change of insight. Go farther than you think you should, and live with the uncertainty. Put away your notes and feel your way to a decision. Learn to spot your assumptions. Stay curious. Don’t box yourself into a role. Remember that clients are people, and bring them into your process. Hang with different crowds and cultivate allies within clients. Pick your battles. Accept that good work does not sell itself: changing design is easy, but changing minds is hard and vital. Pay attention to your failures, however big or small. And accept that everything is always changing.