Why Performing Artists Make Amazing UX Designers
Performing artists may seem disconnected to digital design, but the similarities are stronger than you think.
User Experience Design has had a rush of newcomers in recent years, particularly because the field is so friendly to career pivoters. For one group of common career pivoters, making the leap to UX design doesn’t come with the typical transferable skills, but might be a UX team’s secret weapon. Performing artists — actors, musicians, dancers, singers — may not seem like a logical choice, but they excel in the areas that a bootcamp can’t teach. Here are seven reasons you should think about hiring a Performing Arts Major for your next UX hire.
Teamwork makes the dream work
Collaboration is at the core of creating any good performance. If you can’t work with different people, in different roles, the final product will show the cracks. Have you ever watched a movie and felt like something was off? That’s because something was. In the same way, working well with a team of developers, product managers, and stakeholders is one of the most important soft skills a designer can nurture.
Whether it be theatre, dance, or music, any career pivoter from these fields knows that you won’t always agree, but also how to make it work. They understand a project’s natural give and take and can determine which battles to pick and why. These are skills that a lot of junior designers have a hard time understanding. Building strong relationships is a cornerstone of UX work and the best performers understand that.
Adapting Quickly
How many times have you seen a performance and noticed a performer make a mistake? I guarantee you the number is higher than you think. Performers are great at analyzing situations quickly and adjusting on the fly based on an infinite number of things and possibilities. After all, “acting is reacting” is a slogan that anyone with a theatre arts degree knows all too well.
Adapting and finding solutions for user needs is the primary job of a UX designer. We constantly work with changing needs and constraints that require us to throw out everything we have and start from scratch, often quickly and under the pressure of a deadline. This leads me to my next point…
They know the importance of a deadline
Performing artists also have a great deal of experience working with deadlines. Within a production, multiple deadlines lead to an opening night. If one deadline is missed, there is rarely time to make it up. No one would want to see a show with a dancer who can’t remember their choreography. The same can be transferred to their UX work. A designer that consistently falls behind deadlines is going to cause more problems than one that needs a little bit more feedback on their designs. Oh! That’s a good point!
They can take feedback and work with it
In any creative endeavor, feedback is essential for growth, and performing artists have spent years honing their craft and taking feedback from teachers and colleagues. This makes them especially well-suited for the ever-changing world of UX design where feedback is often essential for success. They rely on the feedback of their director, their cast, and their audience to tailor their performance, the same way that UX designers rely on user feedback.
There is also the way feedback is given. Getting strange analogies in how to perform something is very similar to hearing a client say they want something to “pop.” It’s vague and not easy to take action on. Unless of course one of the major experiences you have had is taking strange, non-tangible feedback, and making it into a masterpiece
In and Out and Done
Performing artists are also well-suited to project-based assignments. As a theater major, I was trained to take on projects that had a beginning and an end and could be completed in a certain amount of time. This makes them ideal for UX design, which is often blocked out in roadmaps. They can onboard a project quickly and learn on their feet. They can prioritize what will make the biggest impact in the shortest amount of time. Outside of feedback, they know how to work independently and get work done. Most importantly, they know what they need to do to be ready for showtime.
They are trained to tell stories
Storytelling is one of the most difficult soft skills that a UX designer can develop, but performing artists have been strengthening that muscle for a long time. Whether it is getting stakeholder buy-in or guiding a user through a complicated process, they have built that intuitive muscle. Performers have spent their careers trying to get other people to feel something, mainly through their actions, so of course they bring that to a more practical level. A banking app may not need its users to relive childhood trauma, but you can bet that they need their users to trust them. Effective storytelling is the easiest path to that, every time.
Empathy, Empathy, Empathy
This is probably the most overused word in UX design, but there is a reason for that. We need to see through the eyes and intentions of our users to build products that meet their needs. And guess who has been trained day in and day out to analyze character and human behavior? Actors. Dancers. Performers. Those observations dictate every choice they make for a performance, the same way it should guide the UX of product creation. Performers are champions for their characters; they protect them, defend them, and fight for them. Especially against external forces like budgets, roadmaps, and constraints. Does any of this sound familiar?
Please note: I am not saying that hiring a performer is going to give you an immaculate designer right from the start. Like any new hire, there will be a learning time, but I can tell you that the human skills they bring to the table far outweigh the three days it will take for them to learn the basics of Figma.