Comments on: Mythic Design

By: Alessandro Piana Bianco

Alessandro Piana Bianco — Sat, 16 Mar 2013 18:02:50 +0000

Great piece.

And so sadly true. Most user experience designers, or user experience architect, are just Omnigraffle, or Visio, operators. As most IxDs are just Axure operators.

It’s not only that they cannot design, the worst bit is that they don’t have any clue about design (in the broader sense of the term) or Interaction Design (or its wiser parent HCI, or its greater ancestor, ergonomics) or Users.

It happened already with (graphic) design, lots of Photoshop operators, very few *real* designers.

It all started with the mass transition from physical to digital, everybody became a designer, or (with the due differences) a developer. I think the results are out there for all to see.

The worst part is the total absence of honest critique, in UX and design, and it’s so painful having to hear the glorification of *fake* glorious UX (in most cases, also, what’s really being glorified is UI) just to jump of the ‘cool bandwagon’ of whoever sells the most…

By: Lino Mocerino

Lino Mocerino — Sun, 27 Jan 2013 00:30:25 +0000

“Perhaps what they really needed to be taught was to have faith in themselves”. I totally agree. I am not a mystic fan but this saying is what can set the difference between a teacher and a trainer.

By: Arseni

Arseni — Sat, 24 Nov 2012 01:38:04 +0000

I don’t mean to address this directly to the author, but I feel that often people in the industry invent new terms just for the sake of it or to increase their credibility. There’s sometimes a need for a new term or definition, but with UX design field it feels like it’s never ending. People address the same thing in different ways or use one word to describe different concepts.
At the end of the day, imho, it creates a ton of confusion for both practitioners and their clients.
It happens partly because the field itself continues to evolve (which is great), but i think we must be careful introducing new terminology, especially when we can influence other people easily.

p.s.
And this whole topic whether “User Experience” as a term can even exist is extremely annoying. Now, when so many people (outside the design field) finally learned that there’s something called UX and what it kind of means… there will be a wave of up-to-date designers who will tell them that in fact UX does not exists anymore.
Changing/inventing terms all the time doesn’t create more credibility for UX field in general.

By: Christina Wodtke

Christina Wodtke — Thu, 22 Nov 2012 13:54:57 +0000

Hey Nemo, I’ve found that generalists are most appreciated in small organizations rather than large. You are gold to a startup. Sometimes you have to wander the world a bit before you find someone to appreciate your collection of skills. Don’t give up!

By: Nemo

Nemo — Wed, 21 Nov 2012 19:38:00 +0000

We exist. And no one hiring will give us the time of day unless we’re established. Same as it ever was. To say nothing of the obstacles to getting to actually do that work in a typical organization.

By: Laurie Kalmanson

Laurie Kalmanson — Mon, 19 Nov 2012 11:18:53 +0000

Nicely done; getting over around under past above the turfological to do what we do

By: Matthew Hodgson

Matthew Hodgson — Sat, 17 Nov 2012 08:28:31 +0000

It’s as if my unicorn life and what i’ve attempted to pass on to my descendants has flashed before my eyes.

UX will die unless more Padawans move beyond wireframes to the science of users, patterns and behavioral interactions. Lets hope our future is a bright one.

By: Jeff Johnson

Jeff Johnson — Fri, 16 Nov 2012 23:02:30 +0000

Thanks for starting this conversation!

In 2002 Austin Henderson and I wrote an article in Interactions titled “Conceptual Models: Begin by Designing What to Design” (Interactions, Volume 9 Issue 1, January 2002).

More recently we expanded that article into a book: “Conceptual Models: Core to Good Design” (Nov 2011, Morgan & Claypool, http://www.morganclaypool.com/doi/abs/10.2200/S00391ED1V01Y201111HCI012)

The basic idea is that if a designer wants users to develop a useful (and correct) mental model, you need to design a coherent, task-focused conceptual model and then design the UI from that.

By: Paul Ringger

Paul Ringger — Fri, 16 Nov 2012 22:31:04 +0000

Three years after the fact (IA 2009), we’re faced with this same problem. Your talk and Jesse’s talk were great “aha” moments, at least for me. I left that room thinking that the idea of the “product designer” was a done deal. Call me naive too.

Thanks for having the patience to keep pushing.

By: Seth

Seth — Fri, 16 Nov 2012 22:22:20 +0000

I’ve been doing all these things for years without a proper title. Now I have one. Thanks