Bad Habits of UI/UX Designers

From creating imaginary users to forgetting about budgets, the design process has some flaws

Recently, I was pulled into a UI/UX meeting with a big regional bank’s internal team and IT vendor. The bank had hired a whole army of UI/UX designers to revamp both internal and client-facing systems. The senior team members were paid five-figure salaries a month and given senior vice president titles.

It was bizarre and almost illogical how they went about their UI/UX design process. Out of that meeting came a few revelations I just had to share.

Creating Imaginary Personas Instead of Asking Real Users

Why do some UX designers create imaginary “personas” to determine requirements when there are thousands of existing end users who can tell you what they want?

I’m not against using personas for brainstorming sessions if it’s difficult to survey real users. But if the actual end users are available, why wouldn’t you just go out and talk to them? Instead of having a bunch of UI/UX folks sitting in a room imagining themselves to be a 16-year-old or a 60-year-old using the app and then sticking Post-it notes all over a wall.