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.
Over the last few years I've noticed a strange and disturbing trend amongst web practitioners. There was a time—not so long ago—when passionate individuals would blog about their work for no other reason than to share their discoveries. The more prolific of these individuals built up an online reputation and became seen as experts. Some of the more articulate ones were asked to write books or present their thoughts at conferences, and received a modicum of success.
There's a lot of nonsense being written about conferences at the moment; so as a regular speaker, organiser and attendee of both free and paid for events, I thought I'd redress the balance.
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.
Like many geeks in the UK, the Tower Bridge Twitter account was one of the first Twitter Mashups I'd seen. It was also the point where I realised that Twitter was more than just a simple communication tool; it was a powerful and scriptable platform.