There’s some comments below. They verge on debate, but I am not trying to be contentious.
Comments on #1-3:
I think your points #1-#3 are more like along the lines of a specific “business choice”. Importantly, choices have drawbacks. Promoting one aspect or feature in a limited space is a choice to use a limited resource.
Based on what you said, it seems like #1 and #2 are important and valuable. If one of EA’s core activities are its communities, that should be emphasized and adding it would be an huge improvement. If EA’s contributors are substantially from non-white people, this can’t be neglected in photos.
Now, I personally like the idea of promoting communities and genuinely reflecting on the population. However, it also verges into what I might call “politics” or at least non-UX improvements.
Comments on #4:
Overall I think the visual design of CEA and GWWC’s current websites are better than the EA website. I think CEA’s is really good currently, mainly because of their use of nice photos, especially of people.
Below are the top of these pages and maybe what you are referring to:
The pages are excellent, but also are not what I would call “UX design” as I imagined.
They use visual principles that I see commonly on many websites made in the last 5 years.
To try to emphasize this, for a side project, someone I know created a similar page (similar, I think, in every sense, performance, design, and high quality photos) in a few hours and it took off. I might be brutalizing/offending UX designers here.
Also, the main difference in design is simplicity of the elements, in particular CEA design is an extremely simple and effective “landing page”. Also, simple, GWWC, presents a strong narrative in a top down scroll. (I might be messing up terms of art.)
The current EA website is busier, having a few more elements, does not really use scrolling, and has more words. Again, as in my previous comment, it’s not clear this is a bad thing and I might prefer it.
Theme
The theme of this comment is that your reply is different than what expected. I might have expected to learn of a “UX improvement” as some strictly better design choice (“stop using garish colors”), or a better mode of use in some sense (“swiping right on Tinder”).
I agree that design (e.g. “minimalism” or something) might help EA and I wanted to learn what this is.
But my bias is to avoid technological solutions unless it’s clearly needed.
Also, if you have a distinct goal, “we need more non-white people in photos as it better reflects and welcomes the actual community”, I prefer to just state it instead of risking conflating a distinct objective.
Also, really going off topic here, I would like to know more about your experiences with your ethnicity if you have them (note that technically I might have the same ethnicity as you).
You seem to have a lot of thoughtful content and this would be an interesting perspective.
I don’t have the energy to fully engage with these, but maybe we just misunderstand each other in terms of what we define as UI/UX design. To me, and many other UI/UX designers, the UI/UX design is the end-to-end experience of using a website, product, or service, so I think everything I pointed out still falls into the realm of UI/UX design. It’s not just about better interactions. And I think content choices / tradeoffs still can be considered part of the UI/UX design.
Regarding my ethnicity, I have lived in the Philippines for pretty much all of my life, but I am of Chinese descent. I lead community building work for EA Philippines, and have heard a few times from Filipinos that the EA and 80K websites look very Western or White and not as applicable to them. Having non-white photos doesn’t fully solve that problem, but we can take steps towards solving it.
I don’t have the energy to fully engage with these, but maybe we just misunderstand each other in terms of what we define as UI/UX design. To me, and many other UI/UX designers, the UI/UX design is the end-to-end experience of using a website, product, or service, so I think everything I pointed out still falls into the realm of UI/UX design. It’s not just about better interactions. And I think content choices / tradeoffs still can be considered part of the UI/UX design.
The control or selection of specific content, especially the choices you illustrated, being under the purview of UX seems improbable.
It unworkably expands into decisions that are basically always controlled by other parts of the organization (e.g. exec).
To see this another way with examples: we would not accept exec blaming their UX designers for racist or inappropriate content. Similarly, a board would find it ridiculous if a CEO said their “community groups” initiative failed because their UX designer decided it did not belong on the front page.
I know someone who worked adjacent to this space (e.g. hiring and working with the people who hire UX designers).
Someone presenting a UX design that then comprised of the choices in your upper level comment would risk being perceived to be advancing an agenda.
Also, yes Execs can blame whoever wrote the racist or inappropriate content (if it was released without anyone else approving it), which in a big company would be a copywriter or content designer, but in smaller companies could be a UI/UX designer writing that content.
Oh and I don’t think it’s ridiculous to think that an initiative is failing because a designer decided to not make it prominent enough on the website. Making it more prominent could help, and that is something the designer has a say on.
I guess something I’ll agree on here is that CEA contracting a UI/UX designer who isn’t that familiar with CEA’s goals and the EA movement might totally miss out on the need for EA being a community to be highlighted more in the website.
But that doesn’t mean a UI/UX designer doesn’t have to try and surface what the most important things to include in a webpage are. A lot of designers create the designs of entire websites, based on talking to users and understanding the organization’s goals. Each section’s copywriting and layout is an important design choice.
Yes, the executives in an organization have a say in the website’s content and design, but that doesn’t mean the UI/UX designer can’t have a say in that.
A related field to UI/UX design is Content Design and Copywriting. Some UI/UX designers do both content design and copywriting too. Wouldn’t you at least say that those choices of what content to include in a website is a content designer or copywriter’s job? (Yes, other people have a say in it, but that doesn’t mean the ideas can’t come from a content designer too.)
Hi Brian,
Thanks for the thoughtful reply:
There’s some comments below. They verge on debate, but I am not trying to be contentious.
Comments on #1-3:
I think your points #1-#3 are more like along the lines of a specific “business choice”. Importantly, choices have drawbacks. Promoting one aspect or feature in a limited space is a choice to use a limited resource.
Based on what you said, it seems like #1 and #2 are important and valuable. If one of EA’s core activities are its communities, that should be emphasized and adding it would be an huge improvement. If EA’s contributors are substantially from non-white people, this can’t be neglected in photos.
Now, I personally like the idea of promoting communities and genuinely reflecting on the population. However, it also verges into what I might call “politics” or at least non-UX improvements.
Comments on #4:
Below are the top of these pages and maybe what you are referring to:
The pages are excellent, but also are not what I would call “UX design” as I imagined.
They use visual principles that I see commonly on many websites made in the last 5 years.
To try to emphasize this, for a side project, someone I know created a similar page (similar, I think, in every sense, performance, design, and high quality photos) in a few hours and it took off. I might be brutalizing/offending UX designers here.
Also, the main difference in design is simplicity of the elements, in particular CEA design is an extremely simple and effective “landing page”. Also, simple, GWWC, presents a strong narrative in a top down scroll. (I might be messing up terms of art.)
The current EA website is busier, having a few more elements, does not really use scrolling, and has more words. Again, as in my previous comment, it’s not clear this is a bad thing and I might prefer it.
Theme
The theme of this comment is that your reply is different than what expected. I might have expected to learn of a “UX improvement” as some strictly better design choice (“stop using garish colors”), or a better mode of use in some sense (“swiping right on Tinder”).
I agree that design (e.g. “minimalism” or something) might help EA and I wanted to learn what this is.
But my bias is to avoid technological solutions unless it’s clearly needed.
Also, if you have a distinct goal, “we need more non-white people in photos as it better reflects and welcomes the actual community”, I prefer to just state it instead of risking conflating a distinct objective.
Also, really going off topic here, I would like to know more about your experiences with your ethnicity if you have them (note that technically I might have the same ethnicity as you).
You seem to have a lot of thoughtful content and this would be an interesting perspective.
I don’t have the energy to fully engage with these, but maybe we just misunderstand each other in terms of what we define as UI/UX design. To me, and many other UI/UX designers, the UI/UX design is the end-to-end experience of using a website, product, or service, so I think everything I pointed out still falls into the realm of UI/UX design. It’s not just about better interactions. And I think content choices / tradeoffs still can be considered part of the UI/UX design.
Regarding my ethnicity, I have lived in the Philippines for pretty much all of my life, but I am of Chinese descent. I lead community building work for EA Philippines, and have heard a few times from Filipinos that the EA and 80K websites look very Western or White and not as applicable to them. Having non-white photos doesn’t fully solve that problem, but we can take steps towards solving it.
The control or selection of specific content, especially the choices you illustrated, being under the purview of UX seems improbable.
It unworkably expands into decisions that are basically always controlled by other parts of the organization (e.g. exec).
To see this another way with examples: we would not accept exec blaming their UX designers for racist or inappropriate content. Similarly, a board would find it ridiculous if a CEO said their “community groups” initiative failed because their UX designer decided it did not belong on the front page.
I know someone who worked adjacent to this space (e.g. hiring and working with the people who hire UX designers).
Someone presenting a UX design that then comprised of the choices in your upper level comment would risk being perceived to be advancing an agenda.
Also, yes Execs can blame whoever wrote the racist or inappropriate content (if it was released without anyone else approving it), which in a big company would be a copywriter or content designer, but in smaller companies could be a UI/UX designer writing that content.
Oh and I don’t think it’s ridiculous to think that an initiative is failing because a designer decided to not make it prominent enough on the website. Making it more prominent could help, and that is something the designer has a say on.
I guess something I’ll agree on here is that CEA contracting a UI/UX designer who isn’t that familiar with CEA’s goals and the EA movement might totally miss out on the need for EA being a community to be highlighted more in the website.
But that doesn’t mean a UI/UX designer doesn’t have to try and surface what the most important things to include in a webpage are. A lot of designers create the designs of entire websites, based on talking to users and understanding the organization’s goals. Each section’s copywriting and layout is an important design choice.
Yes, the executives in an organization have a say in the website’s content and design, but that doesn’t mean the UI/UX designer can’t have a say in that.
A related field to UI/UX design is Content Design and Copywriting. Some UI/UX designers do both content design and copywriting too. Wouldn’t you at least say that those choices of what content to include in a website is a content designer or copywriter’s job? (Yes, other people have a say in it, but that doesn’t mean the ideas can’t come from a content designer too.)