As UXers, here are just a few of the challenges we are facing today:
- Ongoing layoffs in tech,
- 18F was just dismantled, and
- UX as an industry has never found its footing and after more than 2 decades we are still trying to demonstrate our value to earn the proverbial seat at the table.
In addition to these, we are facing all sorts of economic and social challenges. Sometimes it feels like the world is moving backwards instead of progressing. So, let’s talk about hope.
Redefining productivity in challenging times
This is not about how to stay productive in times of strain by ignoring your mental health and just focusing on the grind.
In fact, while capitalism calls for us to do more with less, I encourage us to do less with less. When we have more, we will do more.
But how can we find satisfaction – maybe even joy – in this context?
The philosophy of small wins in dark corners
My philosophy has long been to achieve small wins in dark corners.
It’s realistic, achievable, and provides constant forward motion, even when the world is burning.
Which I find incredibly encouraging and, dare I say, motivating.
Real-world examples
1. Progress without additional funding
I recently had a meeting with a project team about defining some standards for product requirements. These would promote consistency across products, reduce rework by business analysts, and could be documented in a standard requirements repository for all BAs to access when they start a project. The project team is a little old school, and they talked about the funding I would need to get this off the ground, the resources I would have to assign, and the approvals I would have to get.
My response was: what funding? I already built a DevOps environment and started filling it with best practices from existing projects that BAs could copy over to their project repos. I just need to design a process to get ongoing approvals from the architecture team, as this will be an evergreen project.
After almost 3 decades in start-ups and government, I’m used to working with no budget. And facing skepticism about my ideas. I am used to jumping to finding ways to use the tools we already have to increase the efficiency of our work or to find new ways of doing things. (Another example is that time I built and launched a vaccine attestation registry in 2 days using a survey application.) When you’re not used to having the newest, shiniest tools, you can get really creative! 🙂
2. Innovation without additional resources
To fill the repo, I have been manually reviewing product teams’ DevOps environments and requirements docs to identify functional and non-functional requirements which could be standardized for re-use across products (stuff like standard API or policy compliance requirements). Manually, this is time consuming, so I’m working on a process to scan existing docs using our approved GPT to identify requirements that can be added to the repo.
I found a way to automate the process but we don’t have access to all of apps required to develop and automate this workflow. It requires converting PDFs and Word docs to JSON, running a number of scripts to train the tool, creating tags and then scanning batches of documents to identify requirements against a set of categories. I could submit a request for money and resources to set up the automation. But I would rather get the repo done and ready for use by the BAs. So, instead I am setting time aside every day to manually scan documents one by one using our approved GPT and add any new requirements it identifies into DevOps. By the time I would have gotten approval (or worse, refusal) on a proposal for the tools required to automate this process, I will have a repo filled with useful requirements that I can share with the dozens of BAs across my organization. And I might still submit the proposal to automate the process eventually, but I will be way further along if I hack our current tools to generate similar outcomes in the interim.
The compound effects of small wins
Yes, the world is on fire. Yes, the state of UX is still in flux after so many years. But we can find ways to generate wins – even tiny ones – that can have an impact on our teams and organizations. Small wins generate progress. And over time, these small wins will compound, amounting to significant change. And sometimes, seeing change – no matter how small – can provide the hope we need to continue going.
