The Myth of the Unicorn Designer

Before we started describing $bn companies as unicorns, there was another myth: unicorn designers.

These fabled creatures are capable of excelling in every kind of design possible, be it graphic, UX and copy, as well as research and probably even code.

And much like the real fabled unicorns, they are so incredibly rare as to be essentially not real creatures. I’ve barely come across anyone that can truly excel in all facets of design, and to be honest, we shouldn’t expect that anyone should aspire to it either. Jack of all trades, master of none, and all that.

Jas Deogan explores the idea that costcutting measures in businesses are putting pressure on designers to demonstrate their unicorn credentials and why that’s a mistake.

AI users can’t replace real people

I’m seeing a lot of startups attempting to speed up UX research by creating synthetic users - AI chatbots that you can speak to, which will give you feedback on your ideas and interfaces as if they were a real person.

The idea is great, in that it speeds up and make research much more accessible and low-cost, and could help businesses get feedback even when time-pressed or when research inevitably feels like a monetary luxury.

I don’t like this at all. AI users cannot replace speaking to real people. By its very nature, AI flattens and averages out the human experience and provides it in a completely predictable and shallow response that is barely ever useful or insightful, which is exactly what we need from research.

NN Group has a great roundup of what it’s good for (not much) and what you should do instead.

Shape your own boxes

It’s Friday, so obviously another 8 posts have been written on LinkedIn about what all the different job titles in design mean, and why it really matters/doesn’t really matter.

The reason all this perpetuates is that there are so many skills that a person can learn within design and research, and so many skills that businesses need (and want to shoehorn together into the same role) that these job titles exist to describe what people think they are, or think they need.

I really liked Vitaly Friendman’s article on the subject last week which is a nice way to look at skills in UX and design - and how you can just 'shape your own boxes’ and decide what you enjoy and what you want to learn.