And the first thing I want to discuss is about simple attitudes to UX. I want to discuss the actual idea of there being universal wisdoms about User Experience.
What I'm getting at here, is the tendency of people to speak in absolute about trends in new media: "print is dead", "Nobody reads anymore", "People don't want that".
Now, before you slap me for calling it 'new media', it *is* new media. It's not a new paradigm or a new way of communicating, it is a series of new communications media. Tubes. But unfortunately, it has inherited an awful lot of the bad habits of its crazy uncle, Old Media. Namely, the insecurity.
This insecurity leads people to make ridiculous generalisations that we're so used to hearing, we don't see them as useless anymore. Ironically, there is a tendency in people to nod sagely when told that "people don't want that".
What I'm getting at here, is the tendency of people to speak in absolute about trends in new media: "print is dead", "Nobody reads anymore", "People don't want that".
Now, before you slap me for calling it 'new media', it *is* new media. It's not a new paradigm or a new way of communicating, it is a series of new communications media. Tubes. But unfortunately, it has inherited an awful lot of the bad habits of its crazy uncle, Old Media. Namely, the insecurity.
This insecurity leads people to make ridiculous generalisations that we're so used to hearing, we don't see them as useless anymore. Ironically, there is a tendency in people to nod sagely when told that "people don't want that".
I have never set myself to a design brief where the target audience was "people" (presumably age 0-100). I have never sat down to a brief which is aimed at "anybody", nor have I seen a global established paper based publishing trade disappear last week.
And the quick and easy remedy - are we ready for the science? Is to take the trouble to qualify your sentences. User experience design is the opposite of making assumptions and generalisations. It can't work if you try to design an experience for everyone. You can cast a wide net, but... well, it's a wide net, follow the metaphor.
No: you design for an audience. If it's males age 12-22 in north america, there's a chance you may find they read *less* than another demographic. But you can be guaranteed that no age group anywhere in the world have stopped reading. It may sound facetious, but I'm trying to illustrate a point about what happens when people attempt to discuss UX design: smart people become clouded by a need to be the declarative guru of short, sharp knowledge.
I mostly hate it cos it makes me want to giggle or even sneer. I don't like being reminded that I'm petty.
So - with this as a given - is there any universally applicable wisdom for UX? No there is not: there are simply reliable testing apparatuses, decent data sources, and a layer of more conventional wisdom undewriting the process of asking questions.
UX people should not be making declarations of any description outside of the labels of graphs. The information we deal with is transactionally relatively simple - that is to say, it's not rocket science. The decisions we make based on this data should be similarly made within frameworks that accomodate rethought and reapproach.
And naturally, given this approach, you should hire a UX designer with a lot of experience of asking questions. Why, there was one here a minute ago.
And the quick and easy remedy - are we ready for the science? Is to take the trouble to qualify your sentences. User experience design is the opposite of making assumptions and generalisations. It can't work if you try to design an experience for everyone. You can cast a wide net, but... well, it's a wide net, follow the metaphor.
No: you design for an audience. If it's males age 12-22 in north america, there's a chance you may find they read *less* than another demographic. But you can be guaranteed that no age group anywhere in the world have stopped reading. It may sound facetious, but I'm trying to illustrate a point about what happens when people attempt to discuss UX design: smart people become clouded by a need to be the declarative guru of short, sharp knowledge.
I mostly hate it cos it makes me want to giggle or even sneer. I don't like being reminded that I'm petty.
So - with this as a given - is there any universally applicable wisdom for UX? No there is not: there are simply reliable testing apparatuses, decent data sources, and a layer of more conventional wisdom undewriting the process of asking questions.
UX people should not be making declarations of any description outside of the labels of graphs. The information we deal with is transactionally relatively simple - that is to say, it's not rocket science. The decisions we make based on this data should be similarly made within frameworks that accomodate rethought and reapproach.
And naturally, given this approach, you should hire a UX designer with a lot of experience of asking questions. Why, there was one here a minute ago.
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