Hiring UX Experts Versus Giving Your Team Their Own UX Skills

Is there a conflict between providing expert services and training for those skills?

A colleague wrote:

I wanted to ask your advice:

I was giving a user experience (UX) presentation to a higher level manager recently, and talked about the importance of us providing UX Expert support and also providing UX education at a basic level on testing, card sorts, and other techniques.

Then the manager said: “Wait a minute, aren’t providing Expert services and UX education at odds with each other? Is UX something that should be left to the pros, or not? If it’s such a complex field that we need professionals, why are we teaching that anyone can do it? Aren’t we deprofessionalizing the field? And can’t “bad UX” performed by a newbie be WORSE than no UX at all? Should we provide UX education to the pros, and just awareness to everyone else?”

I was caught a little off guard. I’ve always thought that some UX is always better than no UX, and that have people learn the techniques is a great start to getting people to care. But their opinion was—some UX is dangerous in the wrong hands. And we’re undermining ourselves by doing both.

Can you provide UX services and teach at the same time? Or do you need to choose?

My colleague was correct. Some user experience skills are always better than no user experience skills.

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