Fighter pilots, job seekers, and data scientists. How are these at all related?
One is a warfighter for the US Air Force, flying million-dollar jets for a living. The second is an average person hunting for their next opportunity. The data scientist cares about algorithms, numbers, analytics—data. What could these three possibly have in common?
Me. I designed for each of them.
Really, there are way more audiences I've worked with, but these three seem to have nearly nothing in common. To many people's surprise, they actually have a lot in common. UX matters the same to all of them.
Cognitive load is cognitive load, regardless of whether you're building software to plan missions, search for a job, or analyze data. Making the UI sleek and reducing cognitive load is important to everyone—it isn't exclusive to any one audience.
The warfighter makes split-second decisions. While my interaction with them wasn't during those moments—I was pre-flight—it still mattered because we're talking about lives at stake. Extremely high stakes.
Job seekers don't face the same life-or-death stakes, but to them, it's still high stakes. Without a job, most of us can't survive long. Reducing cognitive load is essential for quality UX, no matter who you're designing for.
Accuracy versus speed matters differently depending on context.
A data scientist wouldn't be any good if they got answers quickly but incorrectly every time. A pilot wouldn't be alive if accuracy was off. Knowing when to slow the user down to ensure accuracy—and when you can allow faster, more mindless interaction—affects everyone. It's just calibrated differently.
What people say and what they actually need is a universal disconnect.
Ever done a user study where feedback seems odd? Doesn't quite add up? I've experienced that. Users kept saying they wanted search. Fine—but there was already search in the app, albeit a clunky implementation that was scoped instead of global.
That wasn't the real issue. Watching their behavior showed what they were actually asking for: a better way to browse and have content surfaced to them.
This isn't unique to one study. Job seekers, data scientists, fighter pilots—they all told me one thing, but watching them use the software revealed what they truly wanted. Knowing how to reconcile user words with their behaviors works on anyone.
Now, there are drastic differences.
If a job seeker applies for a role and doesn't get it—no big deal, onto the next one. That try-again mentality doesn't work for a fighter pilot. You can't put another quarter in the arcade for another try. Respawns aren't real life.
For a job seeker, an error causes frustration. For a pilot, frustration from software is not acceptable. For a data scientist unable to get an algorithm working as expected, it's a completely different kind of frustration.
We should always strive to remove errors and frustrations. But for some audiences, issues leaking into the product are tolerable. For others, they simply can't.
A huge difference in my defense work: while I held top-secret clearance, I was excluded from knowing a ton of information.
I couldn't be in the room a lot. In that world, everything is need-to-know, and I didn't need to know. So designing experiences sometimes meant blind spots that were never going to be filled. I took my best shot in the dark and hoped it worked.
Job seekers and data scientists? They'll answer any question. I could get complete pictures of everything. Much easier when you have the whole scope versus swiss cheese.
Working with fighter pilots taught me there's another level of quality.
While "good enough" is acceptable at some companies, it isn't for these people. The government and defense world unfortunately have terrible design. I have stories about bad design nearly causing catastrophes—where ignoring accessibility and making things unusable for color-blind people nearly caused an international incident.
These people need and want good UX just like everyone else. They just have a much lower tolerance for risk and a much higher bar for accuracy and clear communication.
Empathizing with job seekers is easy because we've all been there.
We had a saying at one company: "I am not the user." Working with job seekers, it was hard to maintain that mindset because slipping into their shoes was so natural. Finding a job is usually stressful. Removing friction and helping them through proper flows was paramount.
Like fighter pilots, data scientists need tiny details to be right. They matter greatly.
But these people are near power users with different workflows and feature requirements. While components don't really change, the way features are structured needed to change. Documenting things mattered. Seeing history mattered. Rich, robust UIs were the norm—not super simple flows.
Having the opportunity to work with different audiences and products makes you a better designer.
You become well-rounded. You understand that many things are universal to all humans. While there are differences and uniqueness to each audience, the underlying principles are the same: people want to use something that seems easy. They don't want to need a PhD to use whatever you're building.
The content was drastically different across these three audiences. The patterns remained the same.
Don't be afraid to jump into another vertical if you're looking for a job.
Deep knowledge in one vertical is powerful. So is having broad experience across many verticals. They both have pros and cons—I don't think one is necessarily better than the other. A lot transfers between verticals, but some things don't. Building specific applications for a warfighter has very little contextual application outside that world. Most of it I can't talk about anyway.
If you want to be great in UX, know this: designing for people nothing like you will open your eyes to understanding humans better.
Not specific people in specific audiences—universal understanding of what works and doesn't work for all of us. We all want the same thing when it comes to using applications: a delightful experience.
Doesn't matter if you're a warfighter, a job seeker, or a data scientist. UX matters.