They say — in hard times you see who your real friends are.
You also see how much the business values your work.
And it doesn’t look great for UX designers.

Design is never done in isolation. We work for businesses. We pride ourselves that we help them solve important problems. Most businesses have big problems right now. And they are not looking to us for answers. This should give you an idea of how much of what we like to claim is true.

Design is inherently wasteful. To innovate and find solutions to complex problems, you need to experiment. You’d be wasting time and resources for something that might not work. And wasting resources right now seems risky and dumb.

It’s not all bad and there are always exceptions.

Not all business is affected equally in this situation. So to be useful as a UX designer you need to be aware of the context.

The type of company and how can you help

Companies in panic mode

These are directly affected by the current situation and they don’t have enough money saved up to pay salaries and rent. For these businesses, cash is oxygen.

Examples of this type of business are restaurants, gyms and others that depend on a physical location.

The only way to help them is if you can help them generate money tomorrow. So your core UX skill might not be relevant. But your peripheral skills might be if you ever sold stuff on eBay or another online market place.

You can help them go online and sell their products or services or rent their equipment.

This is no long term solution in most cases. But the cash infusion could buy them some time to decide what they should do next.‍

Companies that are looking to pivot‍

These are companies that are already partially or fully online. They have some money saved and maybe some small part of the business is still generating revenue. So they are looking to pivot. Use their resources and expertise to generate new sources of income.

Examples of this type of business are agencies, software development shops, SaaS and other service companies.

You can help with:

1. Becoming a remote native — set up the tech and onboard the teams.
2. Remote workshop facilitation to help them generate new business ideas.
3. Set up and run experiments to test new business ideas.
4. Remote workshop facilitation to help them come up with a new long term vision and develop a new strategy for the next two years.
5. Remote workshop facilitation to help them generate ideas on how to cut costs.
6. Remote workshop facilitation to help them come up with a new content marketing strategy based on the new reality.
7. Conversion rate optimisation (CRO) of their existing e-commerce or SaaS business

Companies that are future proof

These are companies that are crushing it right now. They are digital-first, fully remote and with an incised demand for their products or services in the current situation.

Examples of this type of business are e-commerce, online education, SaaS, content production companies and others with digital products in demand.

You can help with:

1. Everything from 1 to 7 that I listed for pivoting companies.
2. Product design — help them ship the new features and product faster.
3. Remote workshop facilitation to help them optimize operations under the new reality.
4. Remote workshop facilitation to help them design a new organisational structure if they hire a lot right now.
5. Remote workshop or lectures on the relevance of UX, so you democratize your knowledge and enable more teams to be user-centred.

All and all a lot of facilitation opportunity not so much execution work.

This is all I got. My 13 ideas of how to be useful as a UX designer during crises.

Do you see yourself doing any of this next week? Do you have other ideas that you think should be on this list? Drop it in the comments.