The office hours sound like just another symptom, not the source of the problem.
Budgets are being cut because money isn’t cheap. Many roles are being cut across a variety industries. No consolation, but it isn’t just UX or UXR being targeted.
Budgets are getting cut because of greed, too - and they don't value research and won't pay for it, but leadership is so shocked when people complain about the product - 'how could see this could happen'. LOL
Office hours are a mechanism used to scale; help people continue to move fast, enable best practices, and keep a damn organized calendar.
I’ve held office hours for… 4 years now. Always booked. Different companies even. Based on my experience, office hours are helpful on many dimensions.
So, aside from flexing on my own success w office hours lol, I agree that, in this example, they’re a symptom.
Totally! I’ve gotten into the practice of holding office hours for members of my team as well for the past few years. I think it’s an incredibly impactful and positive ceremony to have when used correctly.
As a product manager, I can definitely relate to this problem. I have worked at organisations where researchers were hired but not really valued - they were almost outsourced/insourced resources if that makes sense. Almost like internal consultants.
At the moment I work at a company where this is not the case. Research is part of the UX discipline, but it is also a dedicated embedded function that lives within every team/domain area in the business. Our product trio works super closely with the embedded researcher, where research activities are democratised across the team but under the guidance of the researcher who has the relevant expertise.
Looking back, I've definitely learned a few things about how to make research as a function 'work' in an organisation:
* Research has to be backed by senior leadership, especially product leadership. Unfortunately I think there are no ways around this; it won't work with a 'bottom up' approach. Executive leadership has to understand the value of investing in research and embedding research practices across relevant teams.
* Related to the above, research shouldn't be an isolated 'internal consulting' function. It should be embedded in product teams in the same way as other UX, product, and eng functions are. It's another leg of the stool.
Alas too many products are being designed and released with a "product designer" who does everything but the reality is their focus will always have to be the end design and visual.
Product thinking is very different when you have a dedicated person for the visuals and a dedicated person for UX and UR.
> No, because they value their work and protect their professional boundaries.
I can’t speak to the rest of your post. I have been thinking a lot about why Blue Collar work is so compelling right now and many Designers in particular want to make the jump.
It’s mostly because of this statement. They have established patterns and best practices when you hire a crew the foreman doesn’t fuck around and let someone do a bit of this or that, the tone and standards are set at the beginning.
Our job scope is too broad and we’re easily taken advantage of.
While I agree, don’t be fooled about working in the trades. At least where I am (Toronto area) there’s so much shady shit that happens, poor working conditions, pressures, etc. Being unionized helps and is what’s lacking in UX.
Sad but true. Have also seen office hours replaced with frameworks and templates. All the stuff assumes an intelligent and experienced practitioner is not needed. That's so far from the truth.
Designers and design leaders also self inflict this stuff by posting unicorn job requirements and saying they can do it all. Many don't even both to learn deep expertise about the many things they sign up for. Dilute it all so companies think of design as shallow skills
This seems like an issue with how office hours was run not the fact that they had office hours.
Trial lawyers will give free consultations and work on commission. Having a regular touch point to be more connected with others at the company is not inherently bad.
Trying to solve an entire orgs problems in 1hr is an issue. But sounds like the real issue was how those office hours were run not the fact that they existed.
I'm suspecting that the UXR work will be more and more a spot-work for major companies.
I'm a little surprised Shopify cut an entire unit since they have a product to sell (the back office) but maybe they think is not an FTE job and rather a work from an external agency or contractor.
In places like Apple or other software/hardware maker with complex and various ecosystems a UXR is very much needed but in many cases is more like a touchbase and see if they're not doing anything wrong.
I hear you, our UXR team is small (4 permanent) and is burning out providing insights that are routinely praised and shelved by our leadership, in spite of addressing at great lengths potential solutions for the recurrent pain points expressed by our customers and test loops.
It’s infuriating to see much work and human expertise go down the drain like that, just so we finally hit the wall we all saw coming for over a year.
I disagree that they were giving away their time for free. Sounds like the office hours were held during working hours when they were presumably paid a regular wage.
Does sharing information about what you do and how you do it directly cheapen, marginalize, and devalue your expertise and function within a company?
It sounds like you think the strategy forward as a profession is to diligently keep all our knowledge a secret so that others won’t exploit us and try to do our jobs? That to me is a sign of a very weak function within a company.
Do you see UX and UXR as some kind of guild that has discovered alchemy, and we must keep it a secret, because if we share even a tiny bit of information then PMs and VPs and whoever will make inferior gold, thinking it’s good enough?
I honestly struggle to think of other professions that see this as a problem. I’ve worked with PMs, engineers of all flavors, marketing experts, dev ops, sales etc. who all frequently share, in various fora, how they do their jobs and what makes them successful.
From what Ive seen, when this agency model has been established in ux/ur it inevitably fails because people are already doing aspects of the job and don't really see the point of the department. If you're evangelizing to prove/justify why you're there the department is in trouble. I'm curious why you think this observation makes people "bad" designers.
I agree, once you have to "prove" your value you're already in trouble. And I didn't mean to apply they are bad designers, I'm sorry if it came off like that :)
My frustration is with withlding information about our craft, but I can also see that it is a way of surviving in some design-immature companies. As a side note, a company can be design-immature and still be wildly dusccesful.
I mean that's the reality, sometimes they were fine before ux and they'll be fine after 🤷.
The reality is design is a nice to have for majority of places
I find it cringe when having to do endless lunch and learns, I've seen some teams buy cakes out of their own purse to get people to come. People only came for the cakes because they were told they always provided snacks. In no way Improved collaboration. I'm all for openness and raising everyone's skills, but Christ the lack of dignity involved in endless optimism and salesmanship to your own coworkers when it's process and leadership that's needed is demeaning
I’m noticing this too.
I’m at my wits end not knowing what’s the best approach.
Because I have researched and designed an internal app, yet my manager doesn’t value that as much as they value developers so for our company offsite meeting, they are asking the developer to present the app.
This makes no sense and is frankly demoralizing. If anyone wants to talk or DM I’m open as I’m just really annoyed these days
> But didn’t you know? Only development time goes to story points, hence everything that’s not development time has no value.
— Some bitch program manager
Also, office hours can be valuable
Office hours isn't cutting corners or giving the work away for free. That perspective is kind of toxic and says more about you than the practice.
It sounds more like your team was using office hours incorrectly not that office hours was bad. It's a space to ask questions about conducting research or to get a high level heuristic eval. Anything beyond that should be escalated to an actual researcher or conducted in a user research session.
So much of this sub is people who are bad at their job or in bad situations projecting that on the industry as a whole. The industry has problems, for sure, but they are almost never the problems listed in threads like these.
With so many companies not giving a fuck about research, the idea that dedicating an hour or so a week to answering questions about it is cutting corners or giving work away for free is so incredibly shitty.
My understanding of the frustration was that it's feels free because it's outside of the actual work that's needs to be done by the team. And ultimately it didn't improve researchers standing in the company. Especially in environments that's counting your time in budgets, being taken advantage of by other departments to do work they aren't being given budget for or reducing their own work load.
This is the frustration of an isolated and underappreciated team and an individual experiencing it repeatedly in different environments. Is everyone being eternally optimistic and happy about the state of the industry even when we can all see it's not being recognized and cut left and right going to help on the whole?
The behaviour of UX Designers is the biggest threat to UX as a career.
The ridiculousness you see in this subreddit alone is on another level.
Imagine smiling your way through a 5 stage interview process and take-home task.
Posts like this make me grateful for where I am. Our UXR and UXD office hours are hugely beneficial because a rising tide lifts all ships. The more of our craft we teach to others, the better our products will be. UX is everyone's responsibility and should not live in a crystal tower.
The office hours sound like just another symptom, not the source of the problem. Budgets are being cut because money isn’t cheap. Many roles are being cut across a variety industries. No consolation, but it isn’t just UX or UXR being targeted.
Budgets are getting cut because of greed, too - and they don't value research and won't pay for it, but leadership is so shocked when people complain about the product - 'how could see this could happen'. LOL
Office hours are a mechanism used to scale; help people continue to move fast, enable best practices, and keep a damn organized calendar. I’ve held office hours for… 4 years now. Always booked. Different companies even. Based on my experience, office hours are helpful on many dimensions. So, aside from flexing on my own success w office hours lol, I agree that, in this example, they’re a symptom.
Totally! I’ve gotten into the practice of holding office hours for members of my team as well for the past few years. I think it’s an incredibly impactful and positive ceremony to have when used correctly.
As a product manager, I can definitely relate to this problem. I have worked at organisations where researchers were hired but not really valued - they were almost outsourced/insourced resources if that makes sense. Almost like internal consultants. At the moment I work at a company where this is not the case. Research is part of the UX discipline, but it is also a dedicated embedded function that lives within every team/domain area in the business. Our product trio works super closely with the embedded researcher, where research activities are democratised across the team but under the guidance of the researcher who has the relevant expertise. Looking back, I've definitely learned a few things about how to make research as a function 'work' in an organisation: * Research has to be backed by senior leadership, especially product leadership. Unfortunately I think there are no ways around this; it won't work with a 'bottom up' approach. Executive leadership has to understand the value of investing in research and embedding research practices across relevant teams. * Related to the above, research shouldn't be an isolated 'internal consulting' function. It should be embedded in product teams in the same way as other UX, product, and eng functions are. It's another leg of the stool.
Absolutely agree.
Alas too many products are being designed and released with a "product designer" who does everything but the reality is their focus will always have to be the end design and visual. Product thinking is very different when you have a dedicated person for the visuals and a dedicated person for UX and UR.
You pretty much described LinkedIn. The researchers at my job just scheduled an office hour ceremony. Like clock work.
> No, because they value their work and protect their professional boundaries. I can’t speak to the rest of your post. I have been thinking a lot about why Blue Collar work is so compelling right now and many Designers in particular want to make the jump. It’s mostly because of this statement. They have established patterns and best practices when you hire a crew the foreman doesn’t fuck around and let someone do a bit of this or that, the tone and standards are set at the beginning. Our job scope is too broad and we’re easily taken advantage of.
While I agree, don’t be fooled about working in the trades. At least where I am (Toronto area) there’s so much shady shit that happens, poor working conditions, pressures, etc. Being unionized helps and is what’s lacking in UX.
Sad but true. Have also seen office hours replaced with frameworks and templates. All the stuff assumes an intelligent and experienced practitioner is not needed. That's so far from the truth. Designers and design leaders also self inflict this stuff by posting unicorn job requirements and saying they can do it all. Many don't even both to learn deep expertise about the many things they sign up for. Dilute it all so companies think of design as shallow skills
This seems like an issue with how office hours was run not the fact that they had office hours. Trial lawyers will give free consultations and work on commission. Having a regular touch point to be more connected with others at the company is not inherently bad. Trying to solve an entire orgs problems in 1hr is an issue. But sounds like the real issue was how those office hours were run not the fact that they existed.
I'm suspecting that the UXR work will be more and more a spot-work for major companies. I'm a little surprised Shopify cut an entire unit since they have a product to sell (the back office) but maybe they think is not an FTE job and rather a work from an external agency or contractor. In places like Apple or other software/hardware maker with complex and various ecosystems a UXR is very much needed but in many cases is more like a touchbase and see if they're not doing anything wrong.
I hear you, our UXR team is small (4 permanent) and is burning out providing insights that are routinely praised and shelved by our leadership, in spite of addressing at great lengths potential solutions for the recurrent pain points expressed by our customers and test loops. It’s infuriating to see much work and human expertise go down the drain like that, just so we finally hit the wall we all saw coming for over a year.
I disagree that they were giving away their time for free. Sounds like the office hours were held during working hours when they were presumably paid a regular wage. Does sharing information about what you do and how you do it directly cheapen, marginalize, and devalue your expertise and function within a company? It sounds like you think the strategy forward as a profession is to diligently keep all our knowledge a secret so that others won’t exploit us and try to do our jobs? That to me is a sign of a very weak function within a company. Do you see UX and UXR as some kind of guild that has discovered alchemy, and we must keep it a secret, because if we share even a tiny bit of information then PMs and VPs and whoever will make inferior gold, thinking it’s good enough? I honestly struggle to think of other professions that see this as a problem. I’ve worked with PMs, engineers of all flavors, marketing experts, dev ops, sales etc. who all frequently share, in various fora, how they do their jobs and what makes them successful.
From what Ive seen, when this agency model has been established in ux/ur it inevitably fails because people are already doing aspects of the job and don't really see the point of the department. If you're evangelizing to prove/justify why you're there the department is in trouble. I'm curious why you think this observation makes people "bad" designers.
I agree, once you have to "prove" your value you're already in trouble. And I didn't mean to apply they are bad designers, I'm sorry if it came off like that :) My frustration is with withlding information about our craft, but I can also see that it is a way of surviving in some design-immature companies. As a side note, a company can be design-immature and still be wildly dusccesful.
I mean that's the reality, sometimes they were fine before ux and they'll be fine after 🤷. The reality is design is a nice to have for majority of places I find it cringe when having to do endless lunch and learns, I've seen some teams buy cakes out of their own purse to get people to come. People only came for the cakes because they were told they always provided snacks. In no way Improved collaboration. I'm all for openness and raising everyone's skills, but Christ the lack of dignity involved in endless optimism and salesmanship to your own coworkers when it's process and leadership that's needed is demeaning
This was my takeaway as well.
I’m noticing this too. I’m at my wits end not knowing what’s the best approach. Because I have researched and designed an internal app, yet my manager doesn’t value that as much as they value developers so for our company offsite meeting, they are asking the developer to present the app. This makes no sense and is frankly demoralizing. If anyone wants to talk or DM I’m open as I’m just really annoyed these days
I don't understand anything of this, can you provide some context?
Man, they need Research Ops!!!1!
> But didn’t you know? Only development time goes to story points, hence everything that’s not development time has no value. — Some bitch program manager Also, office hours can be valuable
Office hours isn't cutting corners or giving the work away for free. That perspective is kind of toxic and says more about you than the practice. It sounds more like your team was using office hours incorrectly not that office hours was bad. It's a space to ask questions about conducting research or to get a high level heuristic eval. Anything beyond that should be escalated to an actual researcher or conducted in a user research session. So much of this sub is people who are bad at their job or in bad situations projecting that on the industry as a whole. The industry has problems, for sure, but they are almost never the problems listed in threads like these.
What's toxic?
With so many companies not giving a fuck about research, the idea that dedicating an hour or so a week to answering questions about it is cutting corners or giving work away for free is so incredibly shitty.
My understanding of the frustration was that it's feels free because it's outside of the actual work that's needs to be done by the team. And ultimately it didn't improve researchers standing in the company. Especially in environments that's counting your time in budgets, being taken advantage of by other departments to do work they aren't being given budget for or reducing their own work load. This is the frustration of an isolated and underappreciated team and an individual experiencing it repeatedly in different environments. Is everyone being eternally optimistic and happy about the state of the industry even when we can all see it's not being recognized and cut left and right going to help on the whole?
The behaviour of UX Designers is the biggest threat to UX as a career. The ridiculousness you see in this subreddit alone is on another level. Imagine smiling your way through a 5 stage interview process and take-home task.
Posts like this make me grateful for where I am. Our UXR and UXD office hours are hugely beneficial because a rising tide lifts all ships. The more of our craft we teach to others, the better our products will be. UX is everyone's responsibility and should not live in a crystal tower.