Thoughts on UX and Political Economy

“Design should not dominate things. Not dominate people. It should help people.” — Dieter Rams”

I've been exposed to more visual design principles or solely UX design principles I suppose. Even though I have recently completed the 8-week UX program at GA, I feel like there are a lot of things that I have yet to explore, discover, and truly understand.

It took me a good few quarters before I was able to soak into the basic concepts and theories of realism, liberalism (and marxism, which is rarely mentioned in the higher political science I took in college). UX is such a broad and general term, I feel like it could easy transform to buzzwords (e.g. sustainability and globalization) that have all faced the same fate - exploitation. 

While I was taking the course, I really wanted to dig into UX more comprehensively. At the same time, I went ahead and downloaded the Kindle app onto my iPad mini. It was one of the best choices made. One of the first ebooks I purchased was Steve Krug's Don't Make Me Think. And just FYI I sincerely recommend that book. I feel like it's the entry-level book. Almost like a prerequisite before stepping into the world of web design (or even responsive web design which is essentially dominating the current trends). To dive deeper, one can also look at the ten principles of usability heuristics set out by Jackob Nielson. All those concepts and advice, principles, whatever you call them are super relevant. I recently also read an article from FastCoDesign in relation to how white space is becoming more and more common and relevant in web and app design. Even Squarespace employs that simple principle of acquiring some white space - in order to tone down the overwhelmingly dominated content that its users inject into the page (such as the text I'm injecting right now, at this very moment).

I became interested in UX because it's somewhat similar to my coursework at college. I was really attracted to Political Economy, mainly looking at ways to eradicate poverty and policies that could be implemented into less-developed countries (LDCs) that focuses on investing in human capital and empowering local communities. To me, I could easily draw similarities between the two. Note that I'm not saying that they are essentially the same thing. But in order to effectively implement policy or even to successfully encourage collective action on an issue, it is important to understand the needs and wants of all the relevant stakeholders (in a UX sense, there are identified as users). 

I remember when I first started the part time course, one of the first areas I encountered in the world of UX was user research - the best practices to obtaining relevant information and to get to the relevant users you need to obtain best results. Results that would help drive your process and really make you wonder and ponder what changes need to be made. Same with economic and social policies. You're thinking about ways to improve a society's way of living. And a lot of these LDCs have limited access to technology. Nonetheless, it's becoming more common that such societies are also simultaneously empowered through greater access to technology. To understand their conditions and needs, we need to really be on the ground, observing and learning about their daily lives.

Anyhow, this post is getting enormously. I think I'll go ahead and stop here and continue my insights tomorrow. I'm going to work in precisely two hours. I'm tired but this schedule itself has proven to be a really brutal being.