User Experience is Not Enough

Great post. I went through the exact same transition, but never phrased it as well as “Designing products is no longer enough for me. I want to design companies.”

Thank you Whitney,
You know what? Your endeavour might have roots not in philosophy but in psychology.  In a way, the Jungian analysts are saying the same things you’re striving for too:

W: “They say you can’t truly love another before you learn to love yourself. ”

I think “They” might be this guy ;)

Carl Jung: 
The Individuation process brings up the true personality of a person, it makes him an Individual. Individuation generally has a profound healing effect on the person. (Jung, 1962, p. 433).
People become harmonious, calm, mature and responsible. They feel and act like parents to the rest of humanity. They protect and promote the ideals of life, freedom and justice. They have amassed knowledge and have a deep understanding about human nature and the universe.  Therefore it is relatively easy for them to psychologically analyze and even cure other people.

Here’s a book I recommend and highly praise from an amazing Jungian analyst with a chapter on “Eros in Organizations”

Eden Project: In Search of the Magical Other – James Hollis
http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/32274.Eden_Project 

Thank you for this post, as an UX-er I’ve been part of organizations/companies too where they needed this kind of help but I failed miserably in giving it :)

I still am part of one who still needs a lot of help but this time I’m listening first …. both myself and the company.

all the best,

Really like your comments on creating a culture of empathy internally. You would think this sort of reasoning would be a given but it just doesn’t seem to be. So often empathy is tacked on to core values or similar but never practiced reflexively. Great post.

I cannot agree more right from the get go.

I’ve worked on so many projects where the client has come in with the usual statements; we want user centred design, focus on the user, user user user user. Then when you show them how that looks and works (well I’d like to add) they balk and start back tracking replacing it with feedback relating to their often dreadful business processes and poor decisions that resulted in them hiring you in the first place.

Yes! Yes! Yes!
I struggle with these same concepts almost every project. It feels so good to read this post! It does feel like a natural progression, doesn’t it? The desire for a good “user experience” can be applied to EVERY thing and EVERY interaction – be it a digital or physical product, or another person. See the world through that lens, and you’re never able to turn back.

I love your comment. This is why I was more curious about the kind of company Apple is than about the Apple products themselves. I believe broken experience tells a lot about the organizations behind the design.

I seriously want to embark on this with you. I keep joking that I could retire if I’d write a book on how NOT to manage creative teams. This post is ridiculously timely for me as I’ve just been pushed out of my job for demanding of management what was promised to the team I was on, which was a team that was supposed to re-envision and rebuild the product with a focus on user experience. Of course, egos and politics as usual made that impossible for me and I’d say its improbable for those still on the team.

I believe that the days of callousness that we find synonymous with capitalism and the starched values of the past couple of generations are coming to an end. Unfortunately, at least in the development world, the answer so far has been adoption of methodologies that don’t address underlying issues, but rather exacerbate the tendency for those managing to give lip service to those who are managed. This comes by way of very nice sounding practices that make the first fatal mistake of being retrofitted to existing outdated structures and practices.

I heard something very, very sad today from someone I admire. They said that the last time that someone can be an authentic individual is between the ages of four and six. It makes me sick to think about the creativity and passion that is dissipating into the ether, not to mention the impact on personal lives. I’m dying to find a way to convince people to refuse to resign themselves to living with stultifying organizational norms. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard recently that there are “personality issues/egos everywhere you go”. I refuse to take it as a given.

So… yeah. I think this is fantastic.

Great thoughts. It is nice to see that there are others thinking the same things out there.

The majority of business teams in this day and age are still based on old thinking of how we used to do business.

It is interesting to look back how the industrial revolution has molded how we do business and the shaping and interaction of teams ultimately for mass production and profit instead of quality, design and innovation.

Capitalism is still king although people in our generation know more and expect more in terms of quality and experience than ever before.

As the world changes it thoughts and views on big business I think that business itself will realize and change as well.

Times are a changin’ though and happy to be a part of it.

If what you are saying is true, which I happen to believe is the case, the implications are profound. The first thing that comes to mind are the people who read (and also believe) this who work for companies that cannot or will not become extraordinary organizations.