Friends and fellow readers, I’m a bit scared to lose my vision — and maybe equally afraid to talk openly about it. There are some obvious reasons tucked in there, and also reasons only a UX designer could relate to. But…charging in front of my fear is hope, and riding alongside the challenge are opportunities.

The backstory

In 2005, I hopped on the hype train of laser vision correction. Lasik seemed a viable option to restore my eyesight to 20/20 and allow me to ditch the glasses and contact lenses. It worked, too. For nearly 12 years I didn’t have to focus on my eyes at all (pun intended). Then, just as I was making a career transition into UX Design in 2017, everything started going downhill with my eyes.

During my UX bootcamp, I was called out by a classmate. She noticed I was squinting a lot and asked if my eyes were okay. I hadn’t even noticed that my face was only a few inches from the screen…all the time, every day. I heard about blue-light filtering glasses as a possible solution to the squinting, so I tried them to no avail.

Upon landing my first UX role (ironically at a contact lens company), I took advantage of their in-house optometrist and had him take a look. After his evaluation and shuffling around to other doctors, it was determined that I had developed a condition called Post-Lasik Ectasia.

I’ll spare you the medical explanation and put it this way — my corneas are slowly warping, bulging over time, and gradually blurring my vision. Left untreated, everything, as they say, will become a blur. (Sorry, I really need to stop it with these puns!) There are some options for treatment, but no cure for Post-Lasik Ectasia.

In May of 2021, I will begin a treatment called Cross-Linking, where they’ll use medicated drops and ultra-violet (UV) light to age and strengthen the tissue bonds in my corneas. This is not a fix, but it slows the progression of the ectasia. There’s no guarantee how my eyes will respond, nor how successful the procedure will be. Oh, and apparently it’s pretty painful.

The daily grind

For context, here’s a simple representation of how text appears on the screen for me. Not only are the actual letters slightly blurry, but I see a reflection of those letters above and to the right of them.

Everything appears this way.

Letters, words, sentences, images. While I do wear prescription eyeglasses, they don’t take away the effects of ectasia. Imagine trying to align a 1px line to a pixel-perfect grid design — it’s a painstaking, arduous process when you’re battling a persistent reflection.

This condition hasn’t completely crippled my ability to design a nice interface. I’ve learned to adapt, use resources available to me, and still crank out clean, crisp content. Accessibility — the principles and necessity of it as a facet of UX — has never meant more to me as a designer than it does now.

Luckily, there is a plethora of tips, tricks, and tools which allow me to do my job. Dark mode, where available, is my new best friend. The zoom tool in Adobe XD lets me get waaaay up close, otherwise, I’d be in trouble. Color contrast plays a large part in my ability to distinguish design elements.

It’s been a smack in the face and a wake-up call, but I never thought I’d be the one on the receiving end of accessibility, relying so heavily on the features available to do UX work.

But…the daily grind isn’t what worries me.

My real worries and fears

I’m not up late at night stressing over my ability to see lines and fonts. The pixels are important, don’t get me wrong. We need (visually) well-designed products, backed by solid research practices. As the Nielsen-Norman Group states, it is through good visual design that we can provoke emotion and delight in our designs.

No matter what happens to me, the world will continue needing elegant visual designs. And, I’ll be fine. I’ll make it in this world should I lose my eyesight. But as I consider the possibility of losing my vision, it hits me at a much more visceral level.

I worry the most about people.

Stop for a moment and think about losing your eyesight. Like me, you’d probably miss seeing your partner each morning, not the pixels of your screen. You’d miss their features and the sparkle in their eyes, not the features of the latest iPhone. You’d yearn once again to see how your children have grown, not to see the latest Dribbble shot.

For me, delight and emotion guide my career as a UX Designer. As I watch and observe people, I’m drawn into their facial expressions because they teach us so much. I love the glimpses of joy I see in their eyes, a smile of delight, the furrowed eyebrows of confusion, and the biting of a lip as they concentrate.

During a usability test or interview, I’m caught up in observation — of the person, of the behavior, of the emotions they express. And we too, as designers, should feel delight as we watch other humans use the products we’ve created. We learn about ourselves by honestly and openly observing people without bias.

And I don’t want to lose that.

What the future holds

Yeah, I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t scared or afraid to lose my eyesight. My hope is that current treatment options help, and future advancements in the field provide new opportunities to restore my vision. We’ll see where it goes.

(I promise that was the last pun.)

Should my vision go south, more opportunities will come my way — of that I have hope. I firmly believe this for you too, that if faced with a debilitating circumstance, one that affects your design career significantly, you can and will find a way to get through it.

As I remain faithful and active to this beloved industry, chances to practice my craft will present themselves, and they will for you too. There is a bright side to all of this and that’s where I’ve fixated my attention.

“It never hurts your eyesight to look on the bright side of things.” ~Barbara Johnson

Whether through speaking, teaching, coaching, or designing to delight, I know I’ll be okay as a designer without my eyes — should that be my path.

And, we have lots of work to do.

• We must improve experiences for those with disabilities.
• We must help designers understand the imperative need incumbent upon them to improve their soft skills.
• We must recognize the importance of designing for more than ourselves, but never forget we too can experience delight in the process.

Whatever it is that my eyes decide to do, my heart and mind are acutely more aware of the opportunities in front of us to improve user experience design.

Mike Curtis (aka Uncle Mikey) helps amplify people and products through human-centered design. With 20+ years experience in design, marketing, e-commerce, and UX, his passion is helping people & businesses apply their skills to the way they’re experienced by others. You can connect with him on LinkedIn, Instagram, Twitter, or follow his writing here on Medium.