Are User Experience Designers All Morons?

Q: Vidad, sometimes I think the UX Designers who roll through this place are all morons. Do you think that's true or am I imagining things?

A: Hmm... well, would you ask someone at a used car dealership whether their salespeople were only in it for the money? Or do you assume it is their personal mission statement to get you remarkable value in previously-owned transportation?

That's not working. Let's try the direct approach.

Yes, of course they're morons. Now please understand, calling a Human Interaction Designer a moron isn't meant to be hurtful. I only mean it in the professional sense. Really, they have a gift. Smart people cannot see problems with the same ease as someone who is easily confused by simple things.

Thanks to the conjunction of a privileged upbringing, traumatic stress from the rigors of art school, and the excessive consumption of substances normally avoided even by the tribal shaman, certain individuals can become preoccupied with matters so utterly inconsequential that they are practically invisible to everyone else. Psychiatrists are aware of the affliction but have never bothered to give it a name since it is generally considered harmless and only some of them starve to death.

A transformative event occurred one day in early 1996, when one of these very special persons (most of whom were at the time doing street theatre or selling glow-in-the-dark hula hoops at Koh Phangan full moon parties) discovered that a large dysfunctional corporation would actually pay him for the service of pointing out the obvious. This rapidly led to what is now known as the Summer of Cashing In. Overnight, behavior that in other fields would be considered a stroke symptom had become an asset, a "constantly fresh perspective."

Over the years we became conditioned to the new reality, and today are no longer flabbergasted to hear this type of gibberish in the workplace:

• "The issue with your website is that you aren't using Semantic Color Mapping. By selectively adding thin bands of fluorescent color to communicate... um... wow, those paragraphs are kind of shaped like Jerry Garcia's beard... so uh... your customers... what were we talking about? No problem, my webinar explains it all. Here's your bill."
• "Oh, I see the problem. The issue is that you are causing Semantic Color Blindness through the over-application of thin bands of fluorescent color. Here's your bill."
• "When you press the doorbell, it should ring. Here's your bill."

So the next time you overhear a UX Designer pointing out things that are self-evident, hand them their drool towel and be grateful they aren't miming invisible boxes on some street corner.