There's a lot of buzz around technology education at the moment. The old ICT courses which taught children to be passive consumers are being overturned as schools in the UK are encouraged to set up their own curricula with programming at it's core. At the same time after-schools clubs are growing in popularity with projects like Code Club operating in nearly a thousand British schools.
We first saw it with food. People getting back to nature and growing their own veggies, or hitting the kitchen to bake their own sour dough. We then saw it with the the rise of the craft movement, inspiring a generation of knitters, potters and jewellery makers take back the skills their great grandparents once owned but were lost in the rush to convenience.
Considering the World Wide Web was created to facilitate the sharing of academic research, I've always been surprised by how little of this I see online. In the early days of the Web, most of the sharing seemed to be done by amateurs and hobbyists. However as businesses discovered the value of the Web, these amateurs turned professional and the discipline of Web Design was born.
I occasionally hear people grumbling on Twitter about the "same old faces" appearing in web design magazines and at conferences. As somebody who takes an active interest in nurturing new talent, I'd hate to think that a deliberate "glass ceiling" had been erected to prevented new people from progressing in our industry.
A lot of the discussions I have about our profession end with somebody saying "Well everything is design at the end of the day". This is a great way of ending a conversation when you're bored and have a bus to catch. It's the designers equivalent of Godwins law.
User research is an extremely powerful tool (or set of tools) for understanding customer needs and behaviours. As digital projects grow in size and complexity, the risk of building the wrong thing becomes an increasing danger. So it makes sense to spend a portion of your budget to ensure that you've done the due diligence and are investing wisely.