People spend 1/3 of their life at work. That’s 90,000 hours over a lifetime. As designers, we have the power to transform people’s lives by transforming the way they work.
When we work, we use tools, and these tools are all designed, but so many are unconsciously designed. The impact of this is inefficient processes, job dissatisfaction, people quitting loudly and people quitting quietly.
Design can change that narrative. We’ll explore 3 ways to shift how we design tools that people use for work to transform lives.
First, we’ll reflect on our latest design project and challenge ourselves on how much time we spent with the people that will be using the tools we design. How well do we understand the people? Have we ever been to the place where they use the tool?
Next, we’ll consider how we measure the success of our projects. Is it all about the tool we’re creating or the people that use them? Are metrics like time on task and error rates measuring anything truly useful? Or are they vanity metrics to prove we did a good job for ourselves?
Finally, we’ll become conscious of the impact the tools we design have on wider society. The person using our tool “our user” is not the only person impacted. We must consider the broader implications of the tools we create.
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Jack Holmes
Jack Holmes is an independent UX researcher and designer from Bristol, UK. He has been helping organizations understand customers and build better products for over 10 years. Holmes is passionate about researching and designing tools that people use for work. Evolving how people work has the power to transform society.
