First off let me apologise for the laboured metaphor I'm about to inflict on you, but I thought it could be entertaining to try and describe the web design industry using a medium I'm sure you're all familiar with; Dungeons & Dragons.
I first came across the concept of the Lean Start-up three years ago while speaking at the Web 2.0 Summit in New York. I'd finished my duties and there was little else of interest on the schedule so I dropped into a panel discussion about start-ups.
As I explained in my previous post, user experience design is a multidisciplinary activity which includes psychology, user research, information architecture, interaction design, graphic design and a host of other disciplines. Due to the complexity of the field a user experience team will typically be made up of individuals with a range of different specialisms.
As somebody who has publically stated that they "don't care about user experience" and is fed up of "defining the dammed thing" I find myself being drawn into discussions about the term far more often than I'd like.
One of the most common things I'm asked is how people can break into the field of user experience design. I'd love to be able to give a simple answer like studying a particular course at University or starting as a UX apprentice and working your way up a series of clearly defined roles, but sadly that's not the case...
There's an interesting debate happening in the world of mobile design at the moment. In one camp we have the "nativists" who believe that the best mobile experiences are tailored to a particular device. These are the people focused on creating platform specific mobile apps and mobile websites. Then we have the "universalists" who believe in the "one web", a place where all content and services can be delivered to multiple devices through the same URL.