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.
A few months ago I tweeted that we no longer needed to sell User Experience and our job was now to focus on delivering good user experiences. A few people asked me to expand on my thinking, so this quick post is in reference to that.
It’s surprisingly common for redesigns to cause outrage amongst their users. People complain that they weren’t consulted, criticise the quality and appropriateness of the new solution, and state that “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.” However if you leave the site for a while, you often see the most critical detractors become the most vocal supporters. Why is this?
Like most designers and developers we've come to the conclusion that big design up front doesn't work. Six month requirement gathering exercises which result in thousand page specifications don't work. In the time it has taken to produce these requirements the business landscape has almost certainly changed. So new requirements appear and designers and developers are forced to battle scope creep and keep these documents alive while at the same time trying to build something that is ever shifting and changing.
The architect Frank Lloyd Wright famously told a customer to move their table when they complained that water was leaking from the ceiling when they ate dinner. This is almost certainly apocryphal but hints at the ego of the experience designer. W tell our users and customers what experience they are going to have (sometimes based on research) but they have to live with the results.