UX in a Startup: Myths and Reality
“If you think you can provide good UX, you are probably wrong.”
I’ve been working with startups, small companies and big companies in these three years of my path to UX. I was fortunate to be a co-founder, lead, consultant, and a product and project manager as one person. But everything that I was doing was tailored to experience.
User Experience, and sometimes Employee Experience, if you wish, when the organizational culture and company’s values affect how people work, what they think and what they do.
It can be surprising enough, but delivering great UX is not possible without having a positive organization structure and culture where people can easily communicate with each other, can share their vision and suggest something or give feedback.
If it’s not the case, UX will be severely damaged as well. If stakeholders cannot listen to people they work with, and managers don’t listen to their employees, there’s no chance that anyone is interested in what a user wants.
It comes to the point where young and aspiring UXers decide that they need to avoid working in big organizations where UX is not really praised or a value that everyone holds onto. They get under the impression that the startup environment would be the best opportunity to thrive and show your potential.
After all, we all want to make an impact, right?
Startups Are Great
Nobody is going to argue with the point that startups, in most cases, look inviting and cool.
A bunch of young (or not so young) people decides to make money off their tech skills and enter the market arena with a new product or service.
We know a lot of successful examples of startups that have grown from zero to hero in a few years and now dominate the market. You can see how smart and well-organized their products are and how good the overall experience is.
As a UXer, you care about nothing but delivering a great user experience, and you obviously know that without the right environment and people who at least heard about UX principles, it will be difficult to thrive.
You think that another emerging startup is a great opportunity for you. And this is the first myth.
Myth No 1. Doing UX in startups is easy
First of all, if you are looking for the “easy way”, you have probably chosen the wrong path with UX in the first place.
UX is never easy. And it doesn’t matter whether you are working with a bunch of young people from a dad’s garage or in the cubicle in a well-established office.
Even though the environment can play a huge role for you to be effective and productive, the outcome of your work is pretty much the same. You have to think of the same things — user research, interviews, and testing, marketing activities, user and marketing personas, usability, QA, UI… It doesn’t fade away once you’ve stepped on the startup soil.
Truth
Doing UX is equally difficult in any organization because it requires a certain type of mindset of a person who does this. As well as his or her ability to communicate the vision clearly and be able to stay calm and persistent in the work he or she does.
See? There’s nothing about special about the environment that would prevent you from doing your job.
More importantly, startups are usually short on a budget (especially from the very beginning), and apart from doing UX, you can find yourself wearing multiple hats at once, being a marketer, designer and QA engineer at the same time.
I would even say that in some cases, other tasks — rather than pure UX tasks — can be way more prioritized and you will have to divide your attention to it, sometimes damaging your UX performance.
Myth No 2. In startups I can learn more and become a UX lead in a few years
You think that a startup will jump-start your career as a UX lead.
It makes sense since you will have to be a solo-UXer (in most cases), you will have to operate with many tasks, be aware of both business objectives and user needs.
You will also have to learn how to make your own decisions and be responsible for the outcome. You think that in a few years of that constant pressure and diversity of tasks, you will be able to do more, much more than now.
And you will also be able to lead others and be a great mentor.
Isn’t it a dream?
Truth
Although it might sound like a dream, it’s actually not true.
Especially if you have never been a lead before, and have just a few years of experience (or none). In this case, this set of responsibilities and tasks that you will have to perform in a startup can easily lead you to professional burnout.
Not only will you not be able to be a great UXer, but you will also not be able to do the scope of tasks you are assigned to.
More importantly, without someone who’s a lead at the moment, or someone who’s senior in the field to show you how to deal with things, it will be even more difficult than ever to make decisions and be sure that what you are doing is right.
At the very beginning you need some guidance and to be sure that someone can fix what you’ve done wrong or help with a tough decision. You rarely have any of that in a startup.
Myth No 3. I’ll be able to design overall experience and be in charge of any changes
Even though startups tend to be more interested in UX and allow, in many cases, think of what users want, there are also some obstacles.
Unless you are the CEO of this startup, you will not be able to prod your (genius) ideas and be able to design overall experience just because you “do UX”.
Truth
Even if you are a part of a design team, you will have plenty of tasks that you will just not be able to grasp all alone.
If your company has a product, you can cover their needs in terms of the user interface, if you are initially a UI designer.
But this application also needs a landing page, a website with a responsive design, a blog with the content, a help desk, demo-sessions, customer support channels, sales and billing procedures, and many more.
Do not forget that you will not be able to be in charge of marketing activities in many cases, or aggressive sales or anything that’s outside of your scope. Do not forget that you are just one person.
Startups Are Great. But…
What you think is perfect cannot be actually just as perfect as you imagine it to be.
And, ironically, it’s perfectly fine.
UX is complicated, and requires effort from all team members in all teams and departments and supported by the organizational culture. But it’s rarely the case.
As an aspiring UXer, you want to find the best place where you can do your job. But a mature UXer knows that there’s no best place. There’s always a place for UX practitioners who do their best to make the experience better, and minds of people more open.
And, who knows. Maybe one day this best work will grow into a great sequence of changes, after all, leading to better UX where it was not possible before.
Doing great UX is impactful. And you need a solid ground for building it sometimes. Especially in places and organizations that have difficulties adopting UX mindset. Part of the UX job is to build this ground if it’s not there yet.
See? There’s nothing special about startups here after all.
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You think that I’m wrong or was not really clear on the topic? Don’t think that I should write about it at all? Or, just the opposite, think that this is the best piece you’ve ever read? I’ll be glad to hear from you on Twitter. Feel free to ping me at @oksanaivanovapm, and let talk UX (or something else)!
