You might not be the best, but at least make an effort.
Welcome to my rant.
This article is part of an ongoing personal journal, where I talk about my experience taking Google’s UX Professional Certificate on Coursera. I just completed Week 3 of Course 2: Start the UX Design Process: Empathize, Define, and Ideate.
I recently finished week 3 of Course 2 for the Google UX Design Certificate. We are moving into more hands-on learning now, which is fine with me. I enjoy reading theory but as a visual learner, I need to practice concepts in order to fully integrate them.
We went over several important topics following on from creating our user personas in week 2, including
- Crafting user stories
- Creating user journey maps
- Considering accessibility and edge cases
After practicing these concepts with exercises, we had another peer-reviewed assignment as our final project — to create our own user journey maps for our personal course project. (Mine is a seed catalog app.)
Now that the setup is out of the way, grab a cup of tea because I’m going to complain.
Let me start by saying I like to be good at things. I take the things I’m interested in seriously. I take my life seriously. If I’m going to learn something, I’m going to give it my time, attention, and best effort.
That’s not to say I’m great at everything I do. Failing is part of the process.
However, I do try my hardest. I read each optional extended learning suggestion. I save all the links to refer back to later. I take notes. I make illustrations of concepts to help me remember. I craft each assignment with care, double-checking that I include every point and element that’s listed. I proofread them before I submit them.
It’s important to me to do my best.
What has moved me to rant is something I noticed during my first peer-reviewed assignment, and again during this last one:
Other people don’t seem to have this value.
And it annoys me.
As part of our assignment, we are to review at least 2 other classmate’s work. We are encouraged to review more if we can, to keep things moving forwards. I review several each time. And I’ve noticed a trend —
People are submitting half-assed work.
I’m not talking about assignments with incorrect grammar — some of the students are ESL or are using a translator to submit projects. I can easily figure out what they are trying to say if that’s the case.
I’m talking about half of the assignment missing or sloppy, incomplete work. For both assignments, there were specific grade points for including allowances for accessibility and inclusion. At least half don’t even bother to include this. In one particularly egregious example, points were awarded for including images — which were left out. Come on! That’s so easy!
I take my peer reviews seriously as well. I read them over carefully and leave feedback about what I thought could be improved or what I was impressed by. So each time, I carefully note why I left grade points off. It annoys me every time, but I use neutral language and state just the facts, ma'am.
Here’s the thing —
Taking a class such as this is for your PERSONAL benefit. If you’re taking this class, you’re hoping to get a better job. You are paying money and investing a pretty large amount of time into something that’s only useful if YOU put in an effort.
What this kind of lackluster effort says to me is:
“I don’t take my career seriously.”
“I don’t take my time seriously.”
“I don’t take this field seriously.”
And most importantly,
“I don’t take your time seriously, either.”
What I want to say to these students is this:
No one is making you do this. You chose to do this. Why are you here if you don’t care enough to learn this subject matter? UX is a field built on empathy and curiosity. You’re demonstrating neither. This is a highly competitive field. Is this how you’re planning to compete for jobs? Is this the amount of dedication and commitment you’re offering to employers? How do you think this is going to work?
But what I also think is:
These people are going to be competing with me in the job market.
And I’m going to get that job if we’re both applying.
Because I may not be the best — but I’m going to try my hardest and show up.
I know it’s silly to be annoyed about how other people are choosing to live their lives. But it irks me.
The truth is, I grew up in poverty. I didn’t have electricity or running water until I was 14. And I was a single, teenage mom. I had two sons by the time I was 18. My boy’s father suffers from extreme mental illness and is out of the picture. Now, my life is really great — but I struggled and worked really hard to get to this point. I feel privileged and excited to have the opportunity to learn. It’s amazing to me that I can even consider working in an innovative, creative field instead of at a low-wage, dead-end job. So yeah, I get kind of irritated when I see a lack of effort.
Alrighty, rant over.
I don’t have any deeply insightful takeaways here, except to say that no one’s perfect and we’re all just trying to live this life. I can deal with being annoyed and move on.
After all, I have plenty to keep me busy — I’m starting week 4, and it looks like we’ll be studying problem statements and value propositions. Exciting!
Cheers, Rachel
