Stories of mass underemployment due to the rise of Artificial Intelligence have been popping up all over the place the past 18 months. It would be easy to dismiss them as crack-pot theories, were it not for the credibility of their authors; from scientists like Stephen Hawkins to industrialists like Elon Musk.
When we first started Clearleft 10 years ago, the bulk of my effort was focussed on explaining to clients what user experience design was, the extra value it offered, and why design needed to be more than just moving boxes around the screen.
Despite having their roots in Silicon Valley, UX designers are a rare breed inside traditional tech companies like Google, Facebook and Twitter. In some cases they are so rare that other designers claim UX design doesn’t even exist. As a result I thought it would be interesting to explore where this attitude has come from, to see if it can hint at where our industry is heading.
Ever since I started blogging in the early the naughties, the emails came in. At first in dribs and drabs, one every few months. However by the end of the decade they were one or two a week. Emails from disgruntled students who had spent up to £9k a year on tuition fees, and even more on living expenses, to find themselves languishing on a course that was woefully out of date.
If you've work with a large design agency before, you've probably been assigned an account manager. They tend to be super charismatic people who are good at forming interpersonal relationships, and build a bridge between you and the agency. However you may also wonder what they actually contribute to the project, and why they appear on your bill at the end of the month.
If I lived and worked in San Fransisco, the current "death of the agency" debate may have slightly more poignancy than it does in the UK. San Francisco and the wider Bay Area is undoubtedly living through a huge tech bubble, and has been for some time. The slew of new tech businesses quickly hoovered up the local talent, before starting to ship them in from around the country and the rest of the world. This includes dozens of Brits I know who have left these shores for a better life in California.