Finds

One of the easiest traps to fall into, with any kind of design, is the confusion of design production with design decisions. A key symptom of this confusion is to think that one’s job is to create design artifacts (wireframes, content documents, comps, conversation designs), instead of realizing that those artifacts are merely the receipts for the analysis and ideation of the thinking and imagining that had to be done. 

Peter Merholz makes the argument that across the industry, design leadership has “succeeded its way into irrelevance.” He outlines how the rise of large design departments, pressured to keep up with AgileTM environments, narrowed its focus to deliver, deliver, deliver artifacts that look good and “pass the sniff test”—cutting the work of determining what the sniff should actually smell like. 

Content design is in the same boat—heck, we’ve almost always been in that boat, since almost everybody thinks that they can write. Visual and UX design used to be protected, because so many people thought they couldn’t draw. But now all designers are facing this problem, and the visual and UX designers hate it just as much as content designers ever have. 

Design, including content design, has the responsibility to make user experiences that create value for both the business and the user. To know what to build, we still need to understand the business goals and the user goals. We still need to do research. We still need ideation and iteration—even if we’re using AI. 

It hurts to see the degradation of our work environments. It’s easy to take personally: “But if they understood my value, they wouldn’t…” 

This r/UXDesign post about “Witnessing AI-induced UX maturity regression is profoundly sad” is about that pain. The teams, products, and companies that we’ve loved working with and for are being undermined by investors and leaders that have lost their way. 

But it’s also real to have hope and recognize our own capabilities. In the comments of that subreddit post, it’s clear that the original poster has a plan forward, and so do many others. 

What we need to do is to remember the value of what we bring. We don’t just produce designs, we produce the right design that will meet user and organizational goals. We’re accountable, good partners, and bring a wealth of lived (and undocumented) wisdom. We have made trillions of dollars for companies because of our underlying skills, not by generating design artifacts.

Flex

We’ve started a new Substack: UX Skills for Business Strategy. I’m  posting there with my co-authors Maya Joseph-Goteiner and Kim Mats Mats. Please join us!

I’m also fumbling around with my Catbird Content content strategy: I’m considering moving where and how I publish these Chirps. I want to continue to build the business, and for that I need to increase my audience. I might move this mailing list to Buttondown, resurrect my Medium blog, or possibly to my own Substack. I might add videos, discussions, and more—everything is on the table.

I know that you, dear reader, might be a super smart content, design, marketing, or business person who has faced similar challenges. If you have advice for me, please let me know!

Philosophy

The past several years, through the pandemic and beyond, taught me about community in ways I had never learned before. I knew that community was important in an intellectual way, informed by anthropology, and at the level of “important public works.” And I knew about the importance of forming small groups and teams to get work done. 

But somehow I had never understood how community participation—the unregulated showing up of people in their own unique ways—creates something larger, stronger, and more durable than any of these defined, formal communities where people could participate in defined, formal roles. 

For example, when I volunteer at Toni’s Ponies, I don’t really have a specific role. Volunteer is the broadest possible title there; it means that you decided to show up. When I’m there, I usually clean up horse poop, because it’s something I can do that some other people can’t. But sometimes, I’m the one who notices that an older volunteer is getting a little unsteady, and I encourage them to take a break and drink some water. Sometimes, I’m the one that cleans out a horse’s hoof and finds a stone that would have caused them pain. I show up and respond to the circumstances around me. 

I’ve figured out that I don’t need to have a defined role in order to show up, though I’m still more comfortable when I do have a job to do. Sometimes, the reason I’m in a group will become evident while I’m there, changing in unpredictable ways. Adapting and contributing in ways that respect my talents and the mission is the best way forward.

This discovery feels completely obvious, like something I should have learned in elementary school, but also feels completely at odds with the way tech workers are expected to function today. Some major tech companies, built because of human ingenuity that challenged the status quo, have been laying off anybody who speaks out against their AI-everything policies (and even people who go along with it). But AI is the opposite of ingenuity: all it can do is to parrot how the thing has been done before. 

In general, AI is marketed to investors as a replacement for employees. In this worldview, employees in any one role are cogs that can be swapped out; no employee is uniquely special. The AI is marketed to employers as a multitool that can replace or “normalize” every employee to become equally competent and fast. 

So if an AI can deliver those artifacts (see the finds, above), then it can replace those human-shaped cogs, the employees that have expensive human needs and ambitions. AI promises to be an upgrade of the global underclass, enabling larger profits and more predictability by replacing all the people.

This is nonsense. The underlying premise that humans have interchangeable, perfectly defined roles, is flawed. The underlying premise that AI engages in cognition (instead of probabilistically constructing sentences and graphics) is also flawed. AI is being asked to do things it can’t do, which is to create not only design artifacts but design thinking.

The sign on my wall currently says “Participate as only you can.” 

I try to use my sign to make sense of the zeitgeist, to remind me who I want to be within it. And I want to be someone who shows up as uniquely myself for my clients, friends, family, co-workers, and more. 

So these days, when the world feels like it’s demanding more and more sameness, I feel the need to figure out how to be the unique person that only I can be.

Hire Catbird Content

When I can help you or your team, please get in touch.  

• Design consulting: Solve problems with adoption, onboarding, usage for products and services, and design process and skill alignment for teams.

• Training & facilitation: Keynotes and other presentations, plus hands-on workshops in UX content, visioning, naming, and team building.

• Mentoring: I work with individuals to focus their own career development, including navigating change, constraints, careers, and more.

• Open office hours (free!) I hold 2 hours a week open on my calendar to connect with people who don’t have business with me, but just want to talk.

I write these newsletters myself, and I stand by what’s in them. If you have kudos, concerns, or questions, please tell me. —Torrey