How to deal with graphic designers who thinks UX is boring

Working as a interaction designer together with graphic designers (or marketing people in general) I sometimes get the strong feeling that we sound too boring when we try to implement usability best practices.

Like: - Great. here he comes dragging his boring points about site speed killing my animated fullscreen background image idea or my very cool intro movie that would have won an award.

I feel that you could argue about the importance of smooth user flow etc, but it doesn't stick. It's not their motive behind being a graphic designer. This tension leads to poorer project results.

How do you tackle graphic designers who behave like this?

Answer

This is actually a pretty common question that is being asked in an uncommon way. I think a better question would be "How do I deal with people (including other designers) who don't realize the importance of UX? Or how do I help people understand that UX should be at the core of any business/project?

I think much of this controlled by you (the UX designer). Regardless of how much people don't like to hear your ideas, your job is to be the voice of the user. I work at a company that has embraced UX to a large extent from the top to bottom but I still have debates all the time with others within the office about features, communications, marketing..etc. Defending the user is not easy, even in a company that's focused on experience. This is a constant struggle but there are techniques to help other understand the importance of UX.

Here's a few things that help:

• Bring your users to the table Your users want you to solve a problem, not win fancy visual design awards or have animated background images. Present visual designers with your user research and even get them involved in talking to users. This will help the visual designers understand that goals of a given feature/screen/flow.


• Teach other team members the fundamentals of UX. Get them involved in the process. Where I work, everyone from the designers to the developers to communications/marketing people have some understanding of UX. This helps get "buy in" to good UX decisions and also helps catch mistakes I make as everyone can identify good UX from bad UX.


• Have strong examples to back up your points. "We shouldn't do X because company ABC did it this way with Y and it was awesome". Point to examples where good UX was rewards but conversions, sales..etc.

A couple other things. If your graphic designer think's she/he is an artist, you've got a problem. Design is a science and is goal oriented. This is true for UX, visual design, print design, industrial design..and so on. If they're not designing for those goals, they're doing it wrong and it should probably be brought to the attention of your management. If the goal of a page is to convert sign ups and they are designing with a goal of dazzling users with flashing page elements and animations you're in trouble. :-)

One last point is that visual design is also part of UX and you should have a strong understanding of their job as well. This may be obvious but taking interest in their work will contribute to them taking an interest in yours.