Is UX Design this complicated already???

Ok, so let me play a little bit of devil’s advocate here.

Four score and seven years ago (just a metaphor lol!), before UX was even defined as a discipline, we have actually already been practicing it albeit not in a boxed-in process.

Why do you think even in this day and age, it is still unregulated, it is still evolving, and there is no one way to really do it??

My adventure before I came into this industry was that I used to be a full-stack developer and eventually focused on front end. During those times, everything that I did was because of what customers or clients needed. It wasn’t really complicated.

I worked with product owners, systems/business analysts, and marketing. The process, although unrefined, was technically the same. We talk about who we’re dealing with, what their problems are, analyze how we can solve that problem, then present options.

Suddenly I wake up in this day and age people asking me where is my journey map, where are my user personas, where is XXXXXX and the list goes on!!

I don’t want to be that person not adapting to change — what I am trying to say here is that not ALL organizations need to go through all of those deliverables to be able to help solve user problems/improve their experience. The UX process differs in each industry. The scope is also different in every organization. Please, please, PLEASE stop being preachy what should and should not be done. If anything, we, as UX designers, need to be flexible how we can communicate our design ideas. True, we should be the ones to champion this “design thinking” process, but in a way that it doesn’t do the opposite of what UX is actually made for — to complicate things.

We only need to exhibit one important trait: empathy.