Ranting about the UX community in UX Mag

UX Magazine interviewed me about a range of topics, including...

• What sets Gel apart from other experience-related conferences:

Have you ever been to a usability or a user experience conference where the experience of the conference wasn't so great? Isn't it ironic...? What if there was a conference that was so committed to the idea of good experience that is actually made the conference itself a good experience? In fact, what if that was the founding vision of the conference? That's what Gel is. Gel is a conference that teaches good experience by creating a series of good experiences throughout the conference.

• Why UX practitioners are always saying "I don't have enough impact":

And that's why we have thousands of professionals around the country all saying the same thing: "Why don't stakeholders listen anymore? Why don't I feel like I'm having an impact?" Well, you put yourself in a fortress, that's why. So people should come down from the tower and speak in the language that the rest of the company is already speaking in, and try to make human-to-human connections between customers and the executives in the company. All kinds of great things happen at that point. If they don't--if things don't start happening right away when you try that--then you're in the wrong place. Find a better job where the organization will appreciate that more genuine approach.

• Who's doing the strategic work of customer-centered business:

Many of the most customer-centric executives that I know of in business today do not have any formal usability or UX training.... And yet, these are seriously customer-centric executives who are listening to customers, making changes based on their feedback, and measuring the results. Everything that UX is supposed to be about, they're doing. ... when they need some extra bandwidth for more tactical jobs they say, "Okay, let's go out and hire in an interaction designer and a user experience director," and that kind of thing. And these people then get plugged into more tactical roles. "Let's do a touchpoint map," and "let's look at these ten different user flows and make sure that the buttons are in the right place in each case." Those are important tasks, but those are tactical not strategic. The strategic work is not being done by UX professionals.

Can't wait to hear the feedback. I know there's resistance in the UX world to these ideas, but maybe this will stir up some people to speak out more if this is what they've been quietly thinking, too.

And if you're interested in Gel, Gel 2010 is a couple of weeks away and we still have a few tickets left.

• Apr 13, 2010
• IN: Customer Experience
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