As the field of UX is growing and we have to tackle more and more challenges, we can no longer reach out for our old tools and methodologies. Jesse James puts forwards a concept to see UX design for the web as one of the many forms of experience design that exist. Liz comes at it from another angle and states that we should rethink how and what we design, we shouldn’t limit our users by our choices, we should enable them to use our designs and run with it. We are only the makers of violin bows, a useless artifact if it wouldn’t be used to create something beautiful.
Jesse James Garett
We also have to look at the experience that is being delivered outside the medium that we delivered it in. Our work is not done when we deliver it, it’s done when it is used by our customers. An experience is (always) the outcome, but our goal should be to engage our users in it. We can speak about engagement in two different dimensions, the perception-action dimension and the cognition-emotion dimension.
Liz Danzico
Not only should we redesign the language and concepts that we are using, we should also alter what we design and how. We should bridge the gap between creator and consumer and meet in the middle, where the consumer can use and reuse what the designer made. We should also understand that to give room for improvisation we should be much more clear about the few rules that we keep in place. To enable improvisation we should design for three things: the present – it has to happen in the now, detectability – it must be understood at at least some level (see rules) and responsiveness – there should be a short feedback loop to keep people engaged.
Michael B. Johnson
We build bows for violins, useless in themselves, but essential to create beautiful things. Quality is the best business practice. We layer our films in three levels: the world in which the story is set, the people who live in that world and finally the individual. Beauty is not merely a side product. Making beautiful products makes people happy and enables them to be more productive.
Joshua Porter
If we want to have a bigger seat at the board table, then we should account for our work. Data-driven design might seem to be the answer but is not. There is a problem with the current divide between data-driven and intuition design. Intuition design might come a long way but leads us into endless discussions. Data-driven design might be clear but could cause us to optimise a sub-optimal peak without ever getting to the much higher mountain a bit further up. We should therefore set up a culture that takes the best out of both worlds. Data doesn’t design, designers do.
We can’t solve the problems with the same tools that created them. – Einstein
Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. – Einstein