Adapting UX methods to context

It’s possible to adapt UX methods to context, and that has a number of advantages. I spoke about it recently with a UX contact of mine. 

Adapting methods is an improvisation skill. My contact explained to me that she thinks improvisationally at work because of her childhood background.

When my contact was growing up, her family didn’t have a lot of money. So they only bought food that was on sale at reduced price. Recipe books weren't very useful, because her kitchen rarely had all the ingredients.

So when she helped out with the cooking, she learned to cook improvisationally without a recipe, based on whatever was in the house. She learned to think about cooking in a flexible and creative way. That resourcefulness stayed with her as a life skill. 

For some people, “improvisation” implies a disorganized and unjustified approach that leads to poor quality results. 

I mean improvisation in a different sense, as an intelligent and strategic way of adapting processes to context. 

You can adapt UX methods to a number of contexts, including the organization, team, project, development methodology and product management methodology. Contextual adaptation is valuable in two ways:

1. It helps you find strategic opportunities to optimize your work processes. This can reduce unnecessary effort and help you come up with better results.
2. When you lack some of the resources you need for an ideal approach, it helps you adjust creatively. 

Here are some examples:

• There are better and worse ways to adapt UX processes to Agile contexts. 
• For a specific project, you might realize you need a new way of structuring or analyzing your data to get useful insights. Or you might need a new kind of data.
• If you can’t get user information directly, maybe you can adapt by contacting people in the organization who are in more direct touch with users, such as the help desk. Sometimes you can find white papers or industry reports that provide insight. It’s not perfect, but you can still get valuable information.

Contextual adaptation comes with a mindset of mental flexibility, autonomy and resourcefulness.

I’ve come to understand some of the obstacles to the improvisational mindset in the UX field:

1. UX isn’t taught as something you can adapt. UX designers are taught to be consumers of methodology rather than designers of methodology. 

• This is useful for beginners. But it holds back experts.
• UX designers don’t learn that each method has its own strengths and weaknesses, its own historical context and ideological assumptions, and is best suited to certain goals and contexts. The methods aren't presented that way in books, so you have to figure it out yourself. It's a new way of thinking.
• Students don’t learn skills of creativity and mental flexibility that might help them move into an improvisational mindset.

2. There’s a lot to learn in UX methodology, and it takes many years just to get a feeling of control over the basics and familiarity with the friction points in methods.

• As a result, it can take many years of experience before UX designers have the bandwidth to think strategically and improvisationally about their methods.
• This is normal. The point is just that as UX specialists grow in experience, they need to start thinking more about it.

At university I studied experimental psychology, where I learned to design scientific experiments. The methods don't have direct access to what’s happening in the participant’s mind. As a result, for each new research goal, you have to improvise indirect methods. And you need to improvise well, because that can make the difference between proving your hypothesis or not.

For each new scientific research experiment, the method is an ingenious customized solution to a difficult challenge. A method that works for one research question won't necessarily work for another.

Like my contact's background in cooking, my improvisation skills in experimental psychology transferred to my career. I always thought of UX methodology as a means that you adapt to your ends and your context.

We don't necessarily want everyone improvising and adapting UX methods. It's a skill in itself. Scientific researchers in training spend 8 years in university learning how to design methods well. I help teams and individual UX designers adapt their methods, but that's based on a lot of project experience figuring it out.

The compromise is to learn adaptive patterns that others have tried and succeeded with. You can also start bringing awareness to the friction points in your methodology. That will motivate you to start looking for adapted solutions.