If we said, “Write your own damn emails”
Imagining how we might spend less effort in the slog and more time in engaging work
Think of a favorite creator, someone whose work you admire.
Comedian and actor Cameron Esposito, essayist Roxane Gay, and novelist Barbara Kingsolver are some of mine.
Now, if the creator I’m thinking of is an author, I imagine there’s a problem with the printer of the creator’s publisher. Maybe the paper bought for a new book isn’t up to the publisher’s standard.
Would the publisher ask Roxane Gay to compose an email requesting a new paper order?
No! That would fall to someone who does print logistics, who has expertise in paper. In this context, the writing for the email needs to be communicative, but it doesn’t need to be funny or compelling or fascinating. Their email needs to say that there’s a problem, and it needs to ask for the appropriate replacement. The choice of paper requires expertise, but the writing mostly doesn’t.
That is how I’ve been experimentally thinking about UX and IA—as a skill set. Of course UX and IA are also jobs and specialties and perspectives and a community, and thinking of them in each of those ways leads different framings of this identity or practicing this expertise.
But when we think of UX and IA as skills, we can apply the publisher metaphor from above.
Today, everyone in an office job needs some skill in writing.
In a future where UX and IA is a skill set that every office worker could perform to some successful degree, I imagine that we experts will be asked to address only truly complex problems. And our colleagues would “write their own emails.”
Perhaps just as importantly, we would be respected for the skilled practitioners that we are. We will be the Cameron Espositos and Roxane Gays and Barbara Kingsolvers of making useful and delightful things and of making the complex clear.
So, how do we get there?
I admit that as a person no longer professionally practicing UX, it’s easy for me to suggest solutions that I don’t have to attempt. That noted, here are some possibilities that I imagine.
For practitioners: If you already have some authority (or if you are bold), try turning down tasks that developers and product owners and managers can complete themselves. Doing this will require knowing and refining your knowledge of an individual’s abilities. I know I have worked with some devs who can skillfully make decisions for common microcopy choices, and it’s given me the space to dive more deeply into more complex choices (including unusual or complex microcopy).
For managers: Let your staff know that you support them delegating tasks, and offer your support when they choose to do it. This could look like speaking in favor of an individual practitioner’s choice to delegate a task if that delegation is questioned during stakeholder reviews, or empowering your staff to say “my manager agrees” in some form or another.
For those who influence hiring: Start including something like “basic UX and IA knowledge or enthusiasm to be trained” on all job descriptions, regardless of their role. And back that up by figuring out what knowledge you want candidates to have, and how to evaluate whether they have it. Then find or make an awesome and brief training that will get new staff up to speed. It will be a process, and I believe it’s one our community could build collaboratively.
For those now in product manager or developer or other roles: Start expecting and nurturing UX skills in your own colleagues and staff. I know many of you continue to practice and advocate for our principles in your own work, and expanding those expectations to your colleagues is a fabulous next step, if you haven’t already begun to do so.
These are certainly not the only ways we might try out this framing of UX and IA as a skill set. And I am sure that there are already many of us who try to spread it in this way, regardless of the language (or lack of language) that we use.
If you start trying it out or already have, I would love to hear from you. Lend me some real workplace perspectives. As someone outside the workplace slog, I have the mental and temporal space to do deep thinking that I didn’t have space to do before. But that thinking isn’t much use if it isn’t grounded in the reality that my community faces.
And if you think UX as a skill set is bunk—or that now just isn’t the right time to be changing workplace expectations—let me know that, too.
In the meantime, know that I’m thinking of you. We deserve respect in our workplaces. Our skills are valuable, and we deserve to work and be heard on the problems that require our expertise.
Mentioned in this issue: Cameron Esposito, Roxane Gay, and Barbara Kingsolver.
You made it to the bottom!
I have a request for you: I’ve been planning to “let people give me money” for this newsletter. It’s something that I often tell others to do, and I figure I should take my own advice. But I think I’m scared!
So if you could take a short moment to send me your thoughts and encouragement via this lil’ form, my rejection sensitivity would be grateful.