| The State of User Experience |
| Thursday April 21, 2005, 13:44 PM EST |
Great thoughts speak only to the thoughtful mind, but great actions speak to all mankind.
- Theodore Roosevelt
It is a source of perpetual amazement to me that so much focus, attention, and energy are given to the opinions of critics and analysts, who sit detached, off to the side, choosing to criticize the efforts of others for seemingly no reason other than to make a bold statement.
I've had the privilege of participating in the formation and growth of the User Experience Network over the past couple of years. An organization dedicated to building tools and infrastructure for individuals and organizations, this non-profit effort - driven by volunteers who give generously of their time to make it succeed - endeavors only to increase the surplus of opportunity for people in design-related fields: to give them local networks and infrastructure. To provide tools like calendars and directories that bridge specialties and ways of thinking. To maximize the value of existing groups and organizations, for the benefit of individuals and the overall community. Our efforts have resulted in the establishment of more than 30 locales around the world and over 40 total Ambassadors, now more than 10 sponsored events despite not having any funding or meaningful assets - among others. I have personally been in a position to interact with our volunteers and participants from the outset of their engaging us, and watch the collective evolution of the many people now involved with the group. And frankly, it has been a phenomenal experience. People with so many different backgrounds and skillsets and reasons for caring coming together and pitching into the effort. And the yield continues to grow, with new web templates the next deliverable on the way.
But we've just been focusing on the ground level work. Actually doing things to help the individual practitioners who have very personal reasons for caring about UX and needing resources and networks. We haven't issued major proclamations, or manifestos, or pounded our chests. We haven't been looking for glory or attention. We've tried to do the basic blocking and tackling, the infrastructure work to build a network and a community.
Yet now we've been told that user experience is dead and user experience is a quality, not a discipline, clarifications that are accompanied by fairly consistent and completely unsubstantiated criticisms of UXnet and the things we are doing.
So, it seems now is the time to stop doing the work for a moment and raise our head into the clouds and begin to engage at the semantic level, lest we allow passive observers to set the course for those of us who are trying to physically get things done.
What is user experience? User experience lives somewhere between marketing, engineering, and design. It is a reaction to the complexity of digital design: whereas the successful design of traditional media like brochures could be easily accomplished by strategy from the business/marketing side being handed to the creative conceptualization and design side, the digital paradigm is inherently and significantly more complex. In fact, compare the structure of a typical 1980's era software design team with the structure of a typical advertising design team during the same period. The two have very little in common. User experience is an outgrowth of the uncomfortable space between the two, when the rise of the web pushed the engineering and technology genius of computer sciences together with advertising executives and creative gurus.
When it was just software, being driven strongly by the engineers, the notion of extending into experience was not such a driver. Don Norman changed that. But it took the web bringing very different people and disciplines messily together to really give it legs, and for a new and awkward participant to emerge. That participant is user experience.
Where is the heart of user experience? Information architecture is a great example. It is a formal profession that was largely created and driven by the web. It was made necessary because of the complexity of digital systems and the dynamic nature of the information. Without the web - without the synthesis between computer science and advertising design - it would essentially not exist. Where would interaction design be without the web? Certainly we would not have an Interaction Designers Group. Content strategy? Usability? Each of these have developed as formal disciplines along with and thanks to the web, and each is a critical part of user experience.
Breaking from the UXnet definition of user experience for a moment, user experience is specifically native to digital interactions. That is what defines it: having to do with the holistic quality of digital interactions. Unlike usability, which is one of myriad design measures for any experience that people have, user experience is the synthesis of all design measures in the specific context of digital interactions. Sure, user experience and the people involved in the space are interested beyond just the digital bits and bytes. But what characterizes user experience, what sets its boundaries as just one component of human experiences, is the fact that it has developed from and is centrally a measure of the digital.
From a semantic perspective, as digital products begin inching toward the point of ubiquity, there will come a time when user experience as a term is redundant and unnecessary. But that time most certainly is not now. We have legions of poorly designed digital products. We have many different, overlapping disciplines that are not coordinated with one another, clumsily trying to navigate through an ill-defined paradigm. We have many, many people who are looking for someplace to call home, a place that nobody can quite put their finger on but falls quietly in the space between marketing, engineering, and design. I've met so many of these people, and they tend toward that quirky netherland of generalist that is neither marketer nor engineer nor designer yet suspiciously incorporates pieces of them all.
Let me tell you a story that is typical of my experiences advocating UXnet: after the Development Consortium at CHI, I joined many of the participants on a panel, talking about the future of user experience. My role was to talk about UXnet as an organization, specifically focused on the Local Ambassadors. After the presentation, a young man approached me with fire in his eyes. He talked about how he had been waiting to hear about something like this, that it felt like home, that he wanted to contribute in some way - any way - and wanted to talk next steps, RIGHT NOW. His interest, his passion, his need for the "this" that we are calling user experience cuts right to the heart of why it is real and important. I've had numerous encounters with people like this. And as I watch Local Ambassadors now stretch onto six continents and almost 20 countries, as I am repeatedly impressed by the passion and time commitment of the many volunteers who have stepped forward and participated in making it something real that matters, it is pretty damn obvious that user experience is not only not dead, but it is just now finally coming to life.
If we are wasting our time and completely off the mark with UXnet, please stand up and start doing something better, either with us or against us. But before deciding the methods and effort are flawed, try talking to the volunteers. Try going to countries that have had little coordination of or exposure to professional UX disciplines. See how - especially in less mature markets and regions - UXnet is providing a revolutionary service to local practitioners.
We can always do more, and better. And we want to. So by all means, for people who care enough to put in the time and be a productive part of the process, do join in. There's a seat at the table waiting for you.
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