Imagine if you will information architecture as a pimply-faced, malcontent teenager. IA is eager to express and redefine itself. It wants to be an individual yet accepted by its peers. It is simultaneously aggravated and apathetic about its parents, mentors, and role-models. It is a bit of a mess, but a wonderful, beautiful mess with…
Professionalism
When was the last time you read your resume? Go ahead and give it a look. Read your last job description. It’s impressive, right? Chances are, you emphasize your accomplishments, your ability to create stunning deliverables, and your extensive knowledge of the user experience practice. Now, think back to your last project. But, ignore the…
Are You Going Soft?
“A perfection of means, and confusion of aims, seems to be our main problem” – Albert Einstein My work involves helping people to understand how to best plan circumstances in which users are engaged and satisfied with their experience. Yet, I do not call myself a user experience designer. I am an information architect. I…
A Perfection of Means and a Confusion of Aims
Parental advisory for strong language, guru deflating and semantics. A couple of years ago, I was asked to speak about “design thinking” at a web conference. The conference-speaking part was nothing new, but the topic certainly was. With the “design thinking” wave having just recently peaked, I had yet to even come up with…
The Music Outlives the Band
Like a lot of folks, I find the term “user experience design” awkward and unsatisfying, at once vague and grandiose, and not accurately descriptive of what I do. Too often it seems like a term untethered, in search of something — anything — we might use it to name. And yet I often call myself…
Whither “User Experience Design”?
Every revolution needs a manifesto, and ‘Portfolio-Centred Design’ is no different. Therefore Stuart Neale stands before you proudly holding aloft his little red book screaming “Power to the designers!”
(I’d walk on by if I were you).
Das Design Revolution
In her closing Keynote at the 2010 IA Summit, Whitney Hess calls the UX community to charge outward with our shared mission and “cross the chasm” to real leadership.
IA Summit 10 – Whitney Hess Keynote
A Podcast from the IA Summit 2010 in Phoenix, AZ
With technology touching ever more of our work lives, user research, in its many guises, becomes part of the project lifecycle. For those of us who want a better idea of what to expect when working with a researcher, Demetrius Madrigal sets our expectations.
Research Logistics
A Crash Course for Designers and Stakeholders
In the Closing Plenary, Jesse James Garrett looks back at Summits past, examines
the current state of User Experience
Design, and endorses a vision of our practice as a mechanism for discovery.
IA Summit 09 – Plenary
Jesse James Garrett Slams One Door and Opens Many More