Navigating Complex UX Projects: What you Should Know

It’s tempting to think UX research and design practice is all sunshine and roses. It’s not. While some UX projects are straightforward, others can sometimes be highly complex. Imagine you’re in a product design role and are tasked with developing a highly complex system. If you feel overwhelmed, don’t, and just read on to the very end.

Complexity in UX and Design product roles can be real. Think an inordinate number of choices every step of the way; think loads of variables, dependencies, delicate tradeoffs, alternative paths, and different expectations not only from what your customers need and want but also from what your functional partners can and cannot deliver. Those can manifest in technical and technological limitations, constraints, progress hurdles, dead ends, difficult conversations, and questions sometimes frontloaded to you — the UX PoC. How about those tight deadlines which you must meet! Your task is to carry this heavy load on your shoulders, run with it, and miraculously find your way out of this uncharted maze.

No kidding! I’ve just painted a grim picture of what handling a complex UX project may look like. But is it really the case? I don’t think so, or at least it doesn’t have to be. When faced with complexity, don’t succumb to this kind of narrative.

True. Complex UX projects come with enormous challenges, however with enormous challenges come unique opportunities, opportunities to bring all of you to act on your analytical, interpersonal, and creative faculties. Here is your chance to innovate, invent, and problem-solve. You may fail on your way, but there is nothing more refreshing than getting back up, honing your direction and view with every iteration and every attempt. With discipline, you and your team will score small victories on a collective journey to a new, undiscovered destination, which is immensely gratifying.

In this article, I’d like to share a few tips on navigating the complexities and uncertainties you’ll face as a UX Researcher and Designer so you can come out on the other side of the UX tunnel into broad daylight. Make no mistake! You may see light on your journey, but it isn’t always what you might think it is, sometimes it can be light emanating from an oncoming train you’re about to collide with (adapted from a quote by Robert Lowell).

Let’s springboard our discussion with two questions:

1) What constitutes a design? And more importantly,

2) How do you ensure your design delivers the goods?

I am asking these questions with one assumption, that the UX research and design must culminate in no less than a thorough, meticulous, and user-centered design.

To answer these questions, let’s hop on a journey. Buckle up; it’s going to be a bumpy ride. Consider for a moment a challenging UX project you remember well. What memories come to mind? Have you encountered bumps, headwinds, and a lack of overall structure on your journey? Do you remember how you pursued or abandoned some of the ideas entertained for a while? Do you recall the various team back and forths, the email exchanges, the workshops, the studies, the meetings, and the conversations you’ve had? Some were productive, some were less productive and even futile or maybe downright frivolous.

I’d like you to strip all your memories away, all of them. Now, examine your journey or what’s remained of it. What do you reckon? Can you reconstruct a basic timeline of critical decisions made, pursued, and eventually acted upon? You are left with an idea/product evolution chart, right? This brings me back to my first question: What constitutes a design? It’s the outcome of your decisions, the end product encapsulating the decisions you made.

Now, what we’ve done thus far is to eliminate some of the noise from your journey; you’ve wound up with your idea/product evolution chart. And lo and behold, your chart looks nothing like a straight line. Archimedes was the first to postulate that the shortest distance between two points is a straight line, which is simply a basic application of geometry (Link). What you’ve embarked on from end-to-end, i.e., starting from the product pre-conception phase to post-UX development, appears to be more of a roller coaster ride, a curved path with twists and turns, gyrations, and course pivots.

“If you want to go to New York City from Nebraska, you take the simplest, most direct route. You don’t go there via Siberia.” (Gary Ryan Blair — Medium)

Based on Archimedes’ principle, we can attribute deviations from an exemplary straight-line journey to costs, misplacements, or potential inefficiencies associated with one’s pursuit of success.

If you’re having doubts, entertain this thought for a moment: now that your project is complete and you are afforded the added benefit of hindsight, do you think you could have improved upon your project? Could you have minimized or avoided some of these deviations and inefficiencies? Sure, some may have fallen outside your control, but overall do you think you could have streamlined your approach and still landed where you wanted to be? Or was everything you went through part and parcel of your pursuit of success? After all, there is no such thing as smooth sailing. Is there?

“If you’re going to work hard to achieve a goal, you owe it to yourself to find the fastest, smartest and easiest way to get to the finish line.” (Gary Ryan Blain — Medium).

Let’s go back to our product evolution chart, and let’s repopulate it this time with all your actions and activities throughout your journey, everything you’ve done between those key decision points on your chart. What do you recognize this time? The choices you made on a daily basis — yeah?

With those in plain sight, it is no wonder how you ended up making the decisions you made. And this is the answer to our second question: the choices you make manifesting in what you think, do, and practice daily will accrue and will furnish your mind accordingly. Your worldviews feed on what you know and do and thus shall set your sail’s direction. And the direction of your sail will determine your destination — that’s what you wind up with, i.e., your end design.

“Success is nothing more than a few simple disciplines practiced every day.” Jim Rohn

Now, what I have just laid out before you is that the choices you make matter over time. Let’s push this line to its logical conclusion. Back to your journey, think to yourself: what’s taken most of my time? On what assumptions and hypotheses have I operated for the longest time? Have I been too fixated on one thing, idea, or path? Was I looking for clues in the right direction? Should I have explored that path earlier on? Have we converged too quickly on a solution? Should I have partnered with the right people earlier in the process? Did I speak up loud enough when I should have? Did I make my UX PoV clear enough for others? Could I have used fewer meetings and still reached the same outcomes? Have I set up my research in ways that precisely tackle the right questions and hypotheses? Have I dug deep enough with my research analyses? Have I made my insights clear and actionable? Make no mistake, your research and design outcomes will be dictated by the quality of your choices.

By raising the questions above, I am not suggesting that we must be over-disciplined and ultra-careful. After all, this isn’t the spirit of the UX process. What I am suggesting, though, is that while the choices we make will surely engender some benefits, there are hidden costs attached to these choices and over time; these costs build up, especially if you veer off the right track for too long. Imagine you’ve dug a hole, and now you cannot reverse course just because you’ve gone too deep down that burrow. Remember, when you make a choice, you’ve wittingly or unwittingly given up on what could have been alternative choices and paths. Choose wisely.

I am also not trying to sell you the idea that you need to go on a wild goose chase or fully explore every direction. While this may sometimes be beneficial, it may be unfeasible, and the truth is that we don’t have all the time and resources in the world to indulge in this kind of luxury. This is where your reasoning, critical thinking, team collaboration, listening and reflective practice skills amongst other skills shall come to work.

I’d like to cap off this article by reflecting on what it means to seek excellence. In many ways, this is the spirit of this article. Simply put, excellence is “doing the right thing” and that’s what finding success in complex UX projects will take.

Excellence is not just an outcome; it’s a journey, an informed process to accomplish a goal. In this process, there is no room for cutting corners; mediocrity in various forms such as jumping to conclusions, proceeding off of weak, unproven assumptions, or making hasty decisions is to be eschewed. I really hope you found this article helpful. If you enjoyed this article, please don’t forget to follow me for more content.