After a long hiatus, I’ve revived uxdesign.com. I have always wished uxdesign.com to be more than a personal blog. Years ago I’d ask every potentially interested member of the Ux Design Community I’d encountered, How Might We serve our profession. And if they’d be willing to contribute. Without pay. Thus, without much input. Thus output.
As we, and the Ux industry as a whole, stand at the precipice of another technological upheaval, I’m reminded every day how much potential work stands before us. We encounter terrible, confusing, difficult to use and un-accessible design decisions every, single, day. So many, we sometimes become blasé. The banality of evil pervades the industry. An industry at a stage of life that’s like Middle Adulthood. Established, yet disappointed with our progress. Early, earnest ambition got us in to business. But business didn’t let us rise to our ambitions.
Our industry’s progress can also look like the growth of a child. Proud “web designer” parents gave birth to Ux and taught her to walk with technology and business. Luck and hard work grew a toddler who’d speak of Ux to anyone with an ear, to promote the toys that excited us. Soon a cocky teenager was ready to conquer the world one “yes absolutely” at a time. The Ux graduate found adulting harder than expected, as might be expected. Because the suits weren’t quite ready to hand the keys to business to beanie-wearing creative outsiders.
And now, with more tools, techniques, frameworks and design systems than ever, we might seem like proud parents. We should be. It’s been quite a journey. Yet Ux has not earned the full independence of value that other professions enjoy. And many of our goals and aspirations for Ux positive impact remain unfulfilled. We didn’t make the world a better place. Our Chief Experience Officer was demoted to Director of Ux. The Director of Ux sidelined. Ux Design Manger de facto cheerleader. And Ux Designer too often relegated to UI design. A production dependency. This, just as AI is set to displace or consolidate a wide swath of roles and responsibilities. Which is to say, we’ve got a long way to go to realize the dreams that inspired over twenty years of Ux design industry growth, to date.
Assuming Product Ux still aspires to greater things, and we may yet more fully realize humanization of HCI, perhaps even business itself, my intent is to contribute. A number of ways–stay tuned. Shall we collaborate?
Reach out: mc@uxdesign.com
Leave a Reply