Welcome to Unlearning UX
How we can unlearn, relearn and learn together to create more meaningful and impactful user experience for all.
Welcome to Unlearning UX by me, Sigit Adinugroho.
I’ve been designing user interface and experiences for close to 13 years. I’ve worked in various companies and industries — from IT, e-commerce, banking, travel and media, in different scales and impacts. From being an individual contributor, to being a manager. From handling one simple portfolio, to multiple portfolios that spans geographies. From startups to multinational corporations.
If there is one most important thing that I learned from my career so far, it’s this: companies and products try very hard to solve business problems, and they are probably pretty successful with it, but often time, at a cost: without considering the human or cultural problem.
There is nothing wrong focusing for business, but, to solely focus on it, I feel like we’re missing out a lot of opportunities. I think we can be profitable, but still impactful or be relevant to the market. If you want to win that market, then by all means, understand that market. If you already make a profit out of a market, it’s always better to contribute something to that market by going deeper and making better product for that market. It’s a win-win solution.
While I never consider myself an expert, I feel like there is a lot of things that can be done with good UX to create better experiences for people. Not just for people in the urban centres, but for people in villages, towns. Not just for people in the developed nations, but people in the developing, struggling nations. Not just for conversions, but for impact. Not just imagining the next big thing for flights and cars, but big thing on fixing how they can actually help the wider community, not just the working class, or the elite class. How to design better experience that creates a lasting impact, that solves a real-world problem, and considers how it improves the quality of life of the “forgottens”.
How design can achieve better quality of life, not only for the businesses, but for customers, across all walks of life, across all geographies in the world.
There is only one thing to do this. It is then useful for us to take a step back to unlearn everything we know about UX, design or product and see if we can be more open to learning new things, including uncomfortable truths, as futurist and philosopher Alvin Toffler once wrote: "The illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn."
This isn’t a journey of preach. This is more a journey of discovery. I am still learning, and I am asking you to also get onboard and learn the same. With each post, I will highlight some of the finer examples of products or companies who go the extra mile to understand its users, and take something away for us to learn, and apply in our own products.
Hello. I am Sigit. I am product designer. I previously designed at Oracle, Bukalapak, DBS Bank, Vrbo/Expedia, and this is my next journey. I hope you’re onboard with me.
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