We get it, you live and breathe UX, but you don’t need to be a party pooper 24/7.
I don’t really like (anymore) to write “controversial” articles because I enjoy not dealing with shitty comments too much, but my god, guys, calm down!
Look, let me get this out of the way immediately: I’m all for good UX, accessibility, and all. I’m not here advocating for making products with just bells and whistles for the sake of it. But you gotta let it go sometimes.
I started working “in digital” 15+ years ago, I started using the internet around 1999. We knew pretty much nothing about UX. Most experiences were terrible, but many were also fun. And it was fun working on those things, experimenting, trying to invent new paradigms. In some areas of the industry, we still do that. For example, there’s a lot to experiment with in AI and all its related products.
But for the most part, we now rely on established patterns and design systems. I understand all of the reasons behind that, 100%. Product X, Y, and Z do this thing this way, we can’t reinvent the wheel, and users are used to this thing working this way. Research demonstrated that blah blah blah… Ok, fair enough. I’m ok with it. It either improves the experience for the vast majority of users, and it’s worth the risk of challenging the status quo, or we don’t change that just for the sake of being different. I think we all agree on this.
Life can be fun, you should try
The long, boring intro is just to try to avoid people coming in the comments with their fist up:
“You young generations don’t get it!”
First of all, I know, I look amazing for my age, but I’m not young, unfortunately. Secondly, yea, I totally get it, as I said.
Let’s get to the point: what sparked this rant? The reaction on social media (mostly LinkedIn. Not sure about X ’cause I’m not around there much) from “UX professionals” to this:
“With all those terrible UX choices Figma made, they spend time on silly things like this!1!!11 AAAARRGHHH”“These cursors are TERRIBLE for accessibility!!1! #a11y”“We got custom cursors on Figma before GTA6!”
(ok the last one makes sense)
People please! Put down the pitchforks for a moment, and let’s talk.
These can be easily turned OFF
2. These will last for one week (by the time you read this, they might be gone already), as explained here. And if they decide to keep it, fine. See point 1.
3. How much of an investment do you think this was? This is 1 designer + 1 developer 2-day job. I don’t think they took entire teams out of a major feature to make this happen. Put down your calculator, it’s ok.
And 4, more companies should do this.
Most importantly, more companies should do things such as April Fun Day. Once a year, or even quarter, spend a day to do a hackaton to let all the silly and not-so-silly ideas that the team keeps in the drawer out.
You don’t even know how many features we love in products we use daily came out of events like that. Spoiler alert: A LOT! Sometimes even entirely different product ideas were born like this.
Everyone in a product team, being them designers, PMs or engineers, has a list of ideas they would like to make happen. Sometimes they are as silly as a custom cursor shaped like a pixelated bunny, sometimes they are Facebook’s chat feature. And this is O-K.
The virtue signalling is strong in these ones
Somehow UX professionals (often self-proclaimed and whose portfolio website is freaking terrible. Usually the louder they are the ugliest their portfolio is, it’s a rule) feel the need to jump on their accessible white horse and yell at the world their high moral standards on what good UX is supposed to be, how a company should invest its resources, what the roadmap of a product should be, and how we should all look at them as the last standing heroes that separate us from a world of unusable products.
We’re good thanks.
Yes, I’d love for Figma to introduce a timeline for transitions in prototypes, I’d love to be able to use animated SVGs, I still don’t understand why I can’t have connectors like I do in Figjam in Figma files (tip: you can copy an arrow from Figjam and paste in a Figma file and it works), I seriously miss having scroll-based animations and much more. But I don’t think a custom-cursor delayed those things much and that modal made my day.
Why are UX professionals on social media thieves of joy? was originally published in UX Collective on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.
