Thanks to Thijs Vieleers I was able to attend the third edition of ‘The Web and Beyond’. What struck me most is the fact that the term user experience (UX) has so rapidly been adopted. In the past (2 years ago) you had your interaction designers, information architects, (web) designers, usability experts, developers and so forth.
Now suddenly everyone is a UX designer. User experience is still a very ill-defined field. The job descriptions of the past actually told something about your profession. The stuff you were good at. With everyone calling themselves UX whatevers, the term is devaluating pretty rapidly (please don’t check my LinkedIn profile).
Steven Pemberton, Chris Fahey and Stephen Anderson delivered quality talks. Being the owner of your own social data – the future according to Pemberton – sounds logical, right? As does RDFa. Although I don’t see how RDFa might make finding a friend by the name of Michael Jackson any easier.
Chris Fahey talked about interfaces exhibiting human characteristics. Not a new concept (Chris pointed to the Media Equation by Reeves and Nass). Chris did link the concept of humanization with the concept of the uncanny valley (coming from robotica), which is an interesting thought.
Stephen Anderson showed how to change behavior using various ‘tools’. He used a business goal (making people more effective e-mailers) to illustrate the usage of each tool. Very nice. Definitely check out his ‘mental notes‘. These should be helpful when you intend to change someone’s behavior anytime soon.
My colleague Stijn Nieuwendijk talked about new ways of doing user/usability research. Does traditional hour-long lab research, originally intended to test business software, still fit the way people use your product today? When the average visitor spends 11 minutes on your site (doing 1 or 2 things and then leaving), is it useful to strain participants for 50 minutes and having them do 8 consecutive tasks?
The talk by Michael Meyer was rather disappointing. Although the core (pun intended) of his talk was valuable and interesting, it took Michael ages to get to his point.
And then there was Josephine Green, a talented speaker. For the first 30 minutes she really had me, with her thoughts on changing from pyramids to pancakes. Josephine passionately pleaded for decentralization. Begone managers, let everyone be the architects of their own lives. She linked this to the environment and stuff. So for a while I was impressed. Somehow claiming you’ll fix the environmental problems does this.
But then this thought kicked in: this isn’t anything new! Her plea for decentralizing management has already been made by, for example Eckart Wintzen in his cell theory. You can even go back to the Romans who at a certain moment in time must have thought “jeez this empire is getting to big! we need to install governors!” (thanks Michael Meyer).
The concept of people being the architects of, and taking responsibility over their own lives isn’t new either. This is a recurring need. When things are faring pretty okay people feel they can do without authority. Or rather, they would like a say in lots of decisions. Like a senate maybe. After a while something goes wrong. ”Whoops, who’s gonna guide us through these bad times? We need someone strong, a leader!”. The Romans knew what to do: install a dictator. As you see, the circumstances have changed. A Roman senator would now use Twitter. The frequency in which we switch from thinking we’d like a leader, or be our own leader might have increased. The underlying trend, the “wave” if you want, hasn’t changed.
I hope this last part is comforting for the guy in the audience who very emotionally asked Josephine to lead him (leaders begone, remember?) through the valley of pancakes. Not surprisingly in other interviews Josephine refers to Gandhi and Jesus as examples of leaders for pancake time (I’m getting confused, thought we’d just dumped the leaders). Josephine might have found her first disciple in this guy form the audience.
Summing it up: Mostly nice talks. One talk to really get me thinking (thank you Josephine). Nice venue. Oh, and did I mention Thijs Vieleers is a nice guy?