I was talking to a friend today. She felt like she had hit a brick wall at work. She had been at a startup for over 2 years as the community manager, and was ready for some harder problems. But she also felt that she didn’t have the technical skills to contribute in a meaningful way. She was not a code person or a Photoshop person; she was an answering emails person. Occasionally she would also mail letters and stock the snack shelves—not exactly inspiring work.

However, she was good with people, and could empathize like nobody’s business.

So I tried my best to convince her to become a guerilla UX designer. 

You know you love your job when you find yourself trying to convince other people to do what you do. And that got me thinking, what exactly do I do? And why exactly do I love it so much?

I’ve decided that it’s all about the different levels of problem solving that it allows.

During any given day, I could be immersed in perfecting the micro-interaction of a single hover state. Or I could be interviewing users to gain insights into future product strategy. Or I could be composing a design proposal for the long term, one that (hopefully) improves the way the company approaches product design.

I find being able to traverse these levels—from implementation all the way up to strategy and process—challenging, invigorating and necessary. They add variety to what would otherwise be a screen-bound existence of pixel-pushing and code-tweaking.

Some people tend to think that implementation is the most important and rewarding part of the job, because you end up with something concrete and real. However I’ve been in implementation-only roles before, and while I get a lot of satisfaction out of making something that people can put their hands on, I would not want to spend my entire career focusing on them. Those are single-level activities, dwelling at the narrow strata of solving technical problems.

In between good bouts of wrestling with code or pixels, I like to visit a different level of my job. Perhaps I’ll help clarify what long-term plans we have for this product by doing some user research, or get a better understanding of the design problem by interviewing some key stakeholders. Or I could go higher yet, and ask myself how user-centered design, as a discipline, can gain greater acceptance in workplaces still unaccustomed to its ways of thinking. I do this because I fervently believe that a greater focus on the user will make the world a better place. But also because of the challenge of it all. It’s not just solving the button placement puzzle or the code puzzle; it’s getting a shot at solving the business puzzle, and the future-of-my-industry puzzle too.

Perhaps I’m lucky that I work at a place where I have that kind of flexibility and self-determination in my day-to-day. But I get the feeling that many jobs can be whatever people make of them these days, especially in smaller companies like startups. UX is important work with clear benefits at all its levels, and to get started you don’t need to be a “photoshop person” or “code person.” You just need to be a person person, someone who can ask good questions and take good notes. Indeed, Leah Buley, the author of The User Experience Team of One notes that UX professionals “cross over” from all sorts of non-technical fields: copywriting, psychology, anthropology, business consulting… not just web design and engineering. Many of them go on to be very influential in the world of design.

As for my friend, I may have convinced her to talk to the “real” designer at her company, to ask how she can help. I hope it works out, and maybe she will soon find this line of work just as fulfilling as I do.