Revisiting Impostor Syndrome in UX
Three years later, here’s what you get…
Imposter Syndrome is the sense that you are less accomplished or qualified than your peers. It’s common in many professions where ambition is high, but it’s particularly prevalent in UX, where we have limited visibility into each other’s work. We end up thinking that everyone else knows something we don’t, that everyone is doing better work than we are.
(We’re Not Worthy: Impostor Syndrome w/Amy Silvers & Lori Widelitz-Cavallucci, 2014)
April 2013: I wrote a post while attending the IA Summit. I’d been talking with some pretty amazing people about feeling like an impostor in a profession I’d been in for over a decade. Some of the folks I spoke with had been at it for 15–20 years. And they still felt like they were waiting for the other shoe to drop. For someone to pull back the curtain on their Oz act.
It seemed to be present across gender (though skewing more towards women), region and ethnicity. The common factor was people who felt it most keenly worked in non-agency settings: Independent consultants, in-house enterprise design practitioners, designers working for small businesses. So, people who were not necessarily surrounded by other design practitioners, and/or who worked at companies who did not hold design as a core competency.
Three Years Ago
In my 2013 post, I summed up the rationale for why the syndrome exists in our profession with the following points:
- User experience as a digital media profession is still in its infancy.
- There wasn’t a college degree for this until about a decade or so ago.
- Companies with talented in-house teams keep hiring outside help (agencies, consultants).
- People who work in design LOVE what they do, and that can’t possibly be “work”.
I believed that understanding the problem would help me overcome it.
Two amazing women I have had the pleasure to get to know, Lori Widelitz-Cavallucci and Amy Silvers, felt so strongly about this issue, they did a great deal of research to develop a talk specifically on the topic.
Today
Looking back over the past three years, having processed the insights from people I’ve spoken with, and from Amy and Lori’s presentation, I can safely say I no longer feel like a poser. I know what I’m doing. I do it really well, and I mentor and grow other amazing designers.
What is difficult for me is to say that (or type it) aloud. Maybe it’s because I’m a woman. Maybe it’s because I’ve done improv for so many years, where singular performance is not acceptable, and team recognition is paramount. Maybe it’s because I was raised as a Southern Baptist in south Texas, where any time I accomplished anything great, or was given a compliment on an achievement, I was taught not to say “thank you,” but to say “praise God.” I’m sure it’s a combination of many factors.
Typing is easier for me because I get to spend as long as I want agonizing over phrasing, and doing my best not to offend or put off anyone, or sound like a braggadocio. It also gives me time to realize that agonizing over phrasing is pointless. People will hear, read and think what they want to. And I’m learning not to care.
Lessons Learned
In all the conversations and experience over the past three years, here is what I’ve learned:
- Although user experience is in its relative infancy, more and more companies are beginning to understand the importance of it. By joining with other design practitioners in advocating for it, and finding executive advocates for it as well, we really can make a world of difference in our own workplace.
- The people graduating from college with degrees in Graphic Design, Industrial Design, HCI/CS, Web Design & Development, etc., are bringing amazing talent and legitimacy to the profession as a whole. It’s our jobs to mentor these people as new professionals. And to be open minded about learning from them as they learn from us.
- Companies will always hire outside talent. Why? Sometimes it’s the need for an outsider’s opinion; a fresh set of eyes. For now, though, it’s mostly because there aren’t enough designers to fill the positions open (in the U.S., at least) in our field, and many companies simply haven’t baked enough design hiring into their plans yet to fill the voracious business need for visioning and strategy. Try pulling designers off of work that is going into production to do strategic work and see how well that’s taken.
- Loving what you do for a living has gained so much popularity and traction in the business sector that it’s no longer something to feel strange or guilty about. I don’t know that it ever really was. It may just be a personal foible that I felt that way. Often, the collaborative nature of what we do gets high visibility in project teams. When people can see your passion for what you do, it interests them.
Embrace Your Awesome
One person who has had a formative influence on how I have come to believe in myself is Christina Wodtke. At IA Summit in 2015, (and since then) we had more than one conversation about accepting compliments and owning your successes.
It started because she gave me a compliment. Even though I knew that the compliment was genuine, when Christina said it, I started attributing other people for the particular success she was referring to. I’m glad I did this in her presence, because Christina, being the force of nature that she is, helped me understand how backwards waving away compliments is. She told me to just learn to say “thank you.”
Because design is a team sport, we always want to acknowledge the team. And that is great and absolutely appropriate. But don’t deny yourself while acknowledging the team. Find a balance. Understand you are an amazing design professional in your own right. And just say “thank you.”
