Before formal UX training programs were widely available, many people (including me) came to this field from different backgrounds: graphic design, web design, engineering, psychology, medical research, anthropology, academia, and technical writing. And we brought with us the skills we’d learned in those earlier disciplines, collectively making our new field richer by sharing and incorporating the knowledge we’d gained elsewhere.
At first glance, my previous career seems pretty unusual for a transition to UX design. For years, I worked in homeless services in Seattle as a shelter and housing counselor. I served homeless and formerly homeless adults living with serious mental illness like schizophrenia, often compounded by co-occurring medical disabilities or self-medication.
When the economy hit a major downturn in the late 2000s, I decided I needed a change of career. I took advantage of new educational benefits and went back to school to study graphic design. I wanted to be a book designer.
But then something incredible happened. My program added its first-ever UX design class. On the first day, as my instructor discussed the basics of starting with your user and understanding and advocating for them, a lightbulb went off: “Oh! This is just the design version of social work.” Suddenly, my life path made sense.
A few key experiences from social services stayed with me as I transitioned into a UX career, and I’d like to share those with you in hopes they’ll help you see your users in a new way.
In both UX and social work, the job is to understand people, their unique needs and motivations, and how to connect and communicate with them. And in both roles, the practitioner’s job is to advocate for people who aren’t always able to advocate for themselves.
Social services systems in the US tend to be a network of byzantine bureaucracies designed piecemeal rather than holistically. They’re notoriously difficult to navigate even without a significant mental illness or disability, and people need expert advocates to help them get their needs met.
As UX practitioners, we need to be advocates for our users simply because they’re not in the room when we’re making key decisions on their behalf. The root causes are different, but our role is the same: Provide understanding and accommodation, and make it as easy as possible for our customers to achieve the outcomes they need.
As a social worker, I saw the impact of my work firsthand, every day. Sometimes these wins were huge and measurable: A woman who had lived without a home for decades, consistently refusing housing or shelter, finally agreeing to move into an apartment.
At Indeed, we celebrate major wins like this all the time: A job seeker who’s been out of work for months or even years finally lands a great job.
But most of the time, as a social worker, these wins came in small, unmeasurable increments: A client finally trusted me enough to accept a hot chocolate packet. Another told a joke for the first time in decades. Someone let me cut the dust bunnies out of his hair and wash it for the first time in years.
