User First! 🙋

When I was last looking for a job, well over six years ago, I had this interesting phone call. My friend Michelle had referred me to the company she was about to leave. I didn't know what to think about this job opportunity at first but after the phone call I was pretty much sure of what I wanted.

When I talked to the potentially new boss, I knew right away that this was someone who understood the value of user experience. More than that: he was convinced that user experience stood above all else. Right away, I was in high spirits.

And it wasn't just talk; he actually stood to his words. The way that this company worked was all in my favour—all in the user's favour. The way that we approached every single client presentation went along the lines of the following (and I quote / translate from German from the actual pitch decks we had used):

We always start with the user and their needs.

From there, we work backwards towards technology, processes and business case.

Never the other way around.

And this is exactly how we worked. These were people I could relate to. A mindset I could buy into. User first! I was in heaven. It gave me purpose—this was a place I felt content working for.

We often turned the client's way of doing things upside down. So much software that I have seen in my years as a User Experience Designer wasn't built with the user in mind. Quite the opposite: usually, these tools were built technology-first, process-second and if the actual people using it were lucky enough, user-third. In the public sector we frequently redesigned expert systems. There was no room in the client's mind to consider the "user"—no room for humanity. But aren't we all humans first and foremost?

I liked our philosophy and how we let the human have a seat at the table again. This wasn't always easy but more often than not, the software we built was hugely impacted by this idea.

The comeback of technology-first

For the last four years, the world in front of us—a world that had been increasingly fostered by the likes of user experience design—suddenly had a new paradigm. AI was upon us. The idea that AI is dominating the way that we build software as we go forward is something that I'm currently trying to get on terms with. But what definitely isn't agreeable is that we went from "user experience above else" to "technology above all else". We've entered a software world, where the most important thing has two uppercase letters.

Here's some examples of how this turns out:

• A former co-worker told me that they are now being tracked whether they’re using AI in their work. This brings to mind a recent push to use AI by Proton's CEO Andy Yen, who has bullied employees to embrace AI: "stop lovingly handcrafting all our code and use AI more." Engineers were opting to pentest software, especially since Proton's products focus on security, one of their main selling points, but Andy Yen considers this "loser thinking". Technology first!
• Many software products stupidly added a chatbot or AI button; not because their users were asking for this but because technology first!
• "AI" has become a marketing term. While some software products claim that they use it behind the scenes—such as a search results page of the Austrian Economic Chamber that proudly announces that the search results were generated with the help of AI—other software products market their product this way: "Use our product. It uses AI, and as we all know, this is the hot shit right now". In fact, software products have been using machine learning for the last 10-15 years, but users shouldn't have to care about that one bit. Technology first!
• On the other hand you have products that clearly do not use the likes of AI but still use the term because it's such a sweet buzzword—there are now washing machines and even rice cookers who claim to use AI. Technology first!
• "Describe how AI has changed your workflow" is what a form for a job posting demanded of me some months ago. There are so many startups popping up, that are entirely sold on AI. They call themselves "AI-natives", call their company an "AI company" and just to be sure, have the two letters in their company name as well. Technology first!

Who has seriously asked for any of this? Just like in the world of the people who were creating applications in the public sector, we have moved back to the "technology-first" paradigm. We have lost sight of what really matters.

We shouldn't let our emotions for a new technology run amok. We shouldn't place technology above all else just because everyone out there is talking about it. We shouldn't forget what's important, blindly jump the hype train and forget who we are and what we stand for. It's time to remind ourselves that when we build software, we build it for people first and foremost. And it's time to consider these beautiful words I have learned when I had started my last job: User first!