I'm a UX Charismatic Force of Nature
Listen up, Chuckles. I’m a UX Charismatic Force of Nature.
You thought you didn’t need me. “We’ve got components,” you said. “We’ve got accessibility baked in. We’ve got a design system.” Cute. Then you tried to ship a product without me and suddenly everyone froze like deer in a Jira backlog. Nobody could even agree on what to name a button. Guess who bailed you out? Yeah. Me.
Without me, your product is a Frankenstein’s monster of dropdowns and modals stitched together with the tears of interns. Users show up, click once, and immediately question their will to live.
I’m the one who sits there politely while you sermonize about the pros and cons of React vs. Angular. Oh yes, I nod, Angular is a “true” framework, fascinating stuff. Then you hit me with how server-side HTMX is the next big wave and how you’ll totally sneak Svelte into the next thing. Adorable. Meanwhile, I’m quietly rewriting your flow so a human being can still reset their password without needing a PhD in computer science.
I’m the one charming the pants off curmudgeonly senior devs who still treat the service they wrote in 2004 like it’s their firstborn child. They hiss when sunlight hits their terminal. They mutter about “when SOAP was king.” And I — smiling, nodding, gently prying their baby out of their cold GitHub repo — am the reason your new feature isn’t stuck in 1997.
I’m the one tracking all the downstream dependencies that’ll blow up if we “just change that one endpoint.” You’re busy high-fiving each other about velocity; I’m preventing a butterfly effect that ends with your analytics dashboard spontaneously combusting.
I’m the one reorganizing your backlog after your “tight 2-week sprint plan” turned into a dystopian landfill of half-finished tickets, and a single lonely story labeled “done” by accident. Your Kanban board is basically a crime scene. I’m CSI: UX, dusting fingerprints off your epics and resuscitating your roadmap with mouth-to-mouth. You’re welcome.
I’m making back alley deals to slide microscopic UX fixes into your merge requests like pickpocket selling your wallet back to you. Project mangers don’t notice. Users do. Suddenly, forms get filled out. Rage-quits disappear. No Jira ticket required.
I’m the one absorbing my users’ niche domain knowledge until I sound like a weekend tax attorney, benefits administrator, or avionics tech. Then I have to invent eight different metaphors just to make their pain points click for the dev team. “It’s like losing your luggage at the airport.” “It’s like trying to plug in a toaster with oven mitts.” “It’s like explaining TikTok to your uncle.” Whatever it takes, baby.
And then, after I’ve translated all that nuance into human-relatable problems? After I’ve navigated the tension between business KPIs, backend constraints, and actual user needs? That’s when someone leans back in their chair and says, “Cool. Can you also pick a color scheme for the Material theme we installed?” Of course. Because I’m apparently your free in-house Pantone oracle.
So yeah, frameworks are fine. Components are neat. Accessibility is table stakes. But the secret sauce is me: the empath, the diplomat, the subject-matter shapeshifter, the magician who turns screaming user pain into something you can actually code.
You didn’t think you needed UX. Now you can’t make a decision without me. And you know it.
Inspired by my favorite piece of literature on the internet.
