UX IS OLDER THAN DESIGN

I read somewhere that the design first appeared the moment someone made drawings of a product and gave it to someone else to make it. And this radiates truth in my opinion. Now, the one that got this request to make something based on someone else's idea was most certainly a craftsman. And these guys used to perform User Experience research along with all the other techniques ever since. The only difference between their and our mindset towards what we do is in the fact that in most cases they had a lifetime to perform something that we are supposed to do in a couple of years or months, sometimes only weeks.

Photo by Nicolas Hoizey

Why is this important to understand? Simply because each generation tends to consider something they do as very innovative and unique, which is legitimate, knowing that each era carries certain specifics and sometimes it's hard to relate these

with methods and processes that have been done in the past by some other (also super-innovative and unique) people. And this is extremely important, because it enables us to make progress in time by using what our predecessors did and upgrading it. And this, as a matter of fact, has several beneficial aspects:

1. We don’t have to do it from the scratch. Ever again.

2. There are a lot of related materials to refer to in probably every single field of human activity.

3. Knowing that the answers are already somewhere out there is quite a relief, especially in this particular field, because it's so wide and holistically demanding.

4. It lowers the performer's ego, which brings him/her to more objective and common-sense-driven solutions.

5. It helps us focus on the core problems, which is sometimes hard, and these core problems nowadays have so much in common with core problems that people have been facing in all times.

"Man is the measure of all things." Protagoras

This sentence is so deep, that it can both be used in a very shallow manner, as well as touch the deep truths of very existence – that it can help boost our productivity, creativity & innovative spirit, even nowadays when we deal with digital products and users, doing something that the world hasn't seen before in that particular form.

All this is a reason why UX design is more than just design – it's an observation, thinking, empathizing, communicating, trying, researching, putting a real effort no matter what it takes in order to understand both nature AND solution of a problem.

I tend to think that a good UX designer is someone who enjoys their everyday rendez-vous with various problems, and does all it takes to transfer it into something useful, helpful and fundamentally constructive. And digital assets, as well as any other design technique, is just a tool for them to express and materialize their aims.

"To know your faults and be able to change is the greatest virtue." Confucius

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