What does it mean to be a UX expert?

Inside or outside?

Ultimately to be a good UX professional and not only a UI designer, a certain experience is needed. “You need to accumulate different skills in different domains.” It’s important to move around and not to stay in the same industry to keep being creative and to be able to suggest new ideas. For example, working in different industries is an invaluable asset to bring in different perspectives to look at a project or to approach things in a new way. From his experience, Wim has seen how industries can learn from each other “some working solution for a city can be a great inspiration for a project in a bank or the other way around. It certainly helps to have that experience and creativity to combine ideas.”

This seems to be a plea to keeping UX designers in an external position at all costs, but Wim is convinced that the two positions have their advantages. The strength of an internal team is that they know the product, and are familiar with the style guide, for example. They guarantee the consistency of the visual design and the brand, which is as necessary as new ideas and fresh air.

Due to their position, UX professionals are constantly in the middle of tensions between users and clients, old and new ways of working, inside and outside inputs. The best answer to these dilemmas, according to Wim, is always communication. That’s the UX people finest weapon: their ability to dialogue, empathise and get everyone on board.

Do you want to discuss more UX topics? Drop my colleague Javier a message (javier@ariadgroup.com), he is an Ariad´s expert for UX.