From IA Summit 2011 – The Fall and Rise of UX

A global swing to the mindset of human-centered, sustainable business is underway. — Cennydd Bowles

The IA (FYI, Information Architecture) Summit  was over for this year and it was really lucky to find this closing plenary (full of wisdom) and share it with you. It’s all about The Fall and Rise of User Experience.

User Experience has become a famous (and fashionable?) phrase at this moment, almost all companies talk about it – they would value customers and their experience. The author of this closing plenary obviously has wisdom and calmness to view this situation critically. User Experience (UX) time comes and of course it is expected to have rise and fall. “Now” might be its rising moment.

I can’t agree more with one keypoint from this speech:

Even among the brightest newcomers I see a worrying trend. User experience converts are typically drawn to the glamor of interaction design on shiny technology, and the amateur psychology that helps them sound authoritative about their approaches. Most lack knowledge of basic information architecture, design theory and elementary programming skills.

UX is extensively carried in web, the most important media today. As a new comer to this field (yes I am) too, I already noticed some emerging dangers that might show Cennydd’s worries. It is so easy to pull out tons of articles talking about website design user experience, how bad the design is and how it would become better with A & B & C redesigned components. Well, I should not say that all of them are not right, but it’s hard to tell whether they have enough value. It’s hard to evaluate.

Personally, I believe UX is not an alone concept. From technique perspective, it includes at least usability, information architecture and interaction design; but on a higher-level, user experience designers should have some ability, or at least passion, to touch a wider business – marketing, business models and customers. Learning should never stop to make user experience perfect.

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