Every solution is right, but one is always more right

There is something a lot of us run into in UX design, and I was one of the people who fell into it.

With all the courses, theories and schools out there, every school has its own take, and most of them are right in some situation. But the one truth in this field is this: every solution is right, and there is always one that is more right.

The trouble is that these theories usually arrive in the abstract, far from any real applied example.

The problem with the courses

Courses like the Google UX Design Certificate lean on theory, research and detail. Then you try to apply it and find it hard to turn that research into actual design decisions.

What confuses people most is the sheer volume of similar-sounding information. It scatters you, and you end up using very little of it in real projects.

And if you want to be rigorous and apply all of that research, which genuinely does make a difference, you will find you need a large team of designers and specialists. That only exists at very large companies, or inside a dedicated team at a UX-focused agency.

Which creates the second problem

So when most of us put a portfolio together, we pick the nicest screens we designed and wrap them in case-study detail like the five stages of design. Stages we usually abandon the moment client or manager feedback arrives, and cannot stick to anyway, given limited resources and time.

The result is work completely detached from the real problem. Or worse, a designer inventing a problem in order to produce something attractive for Behance or Dribbble.

Personally

I struggled to apply the theory and the research while chasing the ideal, and to work out the best way to derive decisions in practice.

What I found later is that this is normal when you work with different teams under technical or time constraints, or with real limits on what research is even possible.

The most important goal of UX design stays the same: find a solution to a real problem a user is facing. Without fantasy work that has no connection to reality or delivery.