DISQUS

Christine, thank you so much for taking the time to write such a thoughtful response to my article. I certainly agree that IA and content are *major* components of user experience, but alas I was writing a "10 most common misconceptions" piece and not a "all the misconceptions I've ever heard" piece. As an independent consultant, I find myself combating these 10 fallacies over and over again, and was fortunate to get some incredible quotes to support those points. Ultimately the article was not an attempt to define UX once and for all, but rather simply an opportunity to dispel the myths that bog down many of my early interactions with prospective clients.
As for your colleague who hated the article, it would be far more productive if that person stood behind his or her views and publicly provided a counter argument. That way we could all have an open discussion about the issues and mutually benefit from each other's thinking. We are a small community of practitioners who need to rely on one another to refine our skills and raise awareness of the practice within the larger business world. Simple declarations don't help anybody.
So again, many thanks for your interesting perspective and respectful response. It is greatly appreciated.

I am tremendously honored by this incredible response, and I'm glad to read that the article resonated with many of you.

@James V, I too like to think of it as the human experience and not the user experience, as you can see in the tagline on my blog.

@Bob Thompson and @taine, It's great to read that you can see yourself or your organization in certain points here. They say the first step to recovery is admitting you have a problem... ;)

@Patrick Newbury, I so appreciate your comment considering your early design work with boxee, and it's great to hear that our approaches are aligned.

@Bora, hilarious. I hope you weren't offended by my comment the other night, but I am glad to read that it stuck with you!

@Ryan Lowe, definitely understand your point and agree that yes, a lot of what we do happens early in the process before other pieces of the puzzle can come together. But my point was that even during visual design, or development, or deployment, or after the product is in people's hands, the organization still needs to continuously work towards improving the experience.

@Christian Hagel, absolutely! I've seen job descriptions that basically amount to "If you can use Visio, come work for us!"

@Natasha, hilarious that you posted a sound clip for "synecdoche." Will Evans tends to use big words :)

@jaded "ux" designer, you make a valid point and I would have liked to discuss it further with you, but for some reason you chose to comment anonymously. In the future, stand behind your position.

@Olga, by all means translate it, and please send me the link when you do.

Thank you again to everyone who commented! I'm really enjoying hearing your thoughts.

"Negatives don't have to stay negative. Make them into positives."

It can be done just by asking for help. Thank you for reminding us all of that today.

Brilliant. I love how you took a personal conversation about my work and extrapolated it to apply to business strategy as a whole.

Coincidentally, take a look at my video on the crowdsourced 2009 predictions that Charlie O'Donnell put together. http://www.thisisgoingtobebig.com/2009/01/crowd...

Sound familiar? :)

This rocks! Thanks :)

Thanks for the link love! I hope to meet you in person one of these days. Take care.

Admitting what I suck at is exactly why I chose to quit my job. Now I'm happier than I've ever been as an independent consultant, getting paid pretty nicely to do exactly what I rock at, and only what I rock at.

Thank you so much to all of you for the amazing words of encouragement. I'll always have this to look back on when I get scared, doubt my abilities and feel lost. I am so fortunate to have such an incredible support system. Thank you thank you thank you!

Arthur, you're probably right. I did take these photos quite a while before I wrote the blog post. I, too, have noticed changes to the DDS screen lately, but not enough to actually change this evaluation ;)

Wow, so many amazing comments. I don't know where to begin! Thank you all so much for putting your honest thoughts and varying opinions here. It means so much to me to have an open and respectful dialogue about this topic, any topic. Thank you for taking the time to contribute.

Forgive me if I don't respond to everyone's post individually.

Many of you talked about how individuals with a shared identity can come together to form a community. I agree, and I have no objection to these "factions," as Matt put it, coming together to strategize how to become stronger, overcome obstacles, and have greater fulfillment. I think that is wonderful, and I'm glad that BlogHer is providing that for people.

I, personally, have never been much of a joiner. Aside from memberships to professional associations, I have never "belonged" to anything. I never had an interest in joining a sorority, never belonged to Hillel or Women@SCS. Instead I wrote for the school paper, raised money for the alumni association and volunteered at a needle exchange program. I also had three part-time jobs: wrote a weekly arts column for City Paper (the free alternative newsweekly), did tech support for the Media department, and designed Flash apps for an online course. For me, my identity has always been based on what I do and not what I was born into.

Both Stephanie and Nate used the term "mommy bloggers," and I'm glad that they did. The subject of my blog is my career, the subject of some other blogs is parenting. I can't wait to be a mom someday, but until then, I have nothing in common with these people. My career trajectory is quite different than theirs, and while I'm sure we can connect on a very intimate level on what it means to be a woman, and the career choices one has to make, and the fears associated with being a mother -- all of this has zero to do with my blog. So why lump me in the same category of "woman bloggers" as you would them?

Steph, both here in your comments and on Twitter, you said that you worry for my generation and that what I wrote made you really sad to read. I think you're off base here. What your generation and my mother's generation of women have done for me is created a world in which I can choose not to self-identify as a woman in the field, but rather as a person. That is a huge accomplishment! I deeply respect the women who have walked before me and I thank them for the bottom of my heart for enabling me to not feel like I have to measure myself against other women. THANK YOU!

Jonathan made the point about BlogHim, and Steph said that that's just every other tech conference. That has not been my experience. There are a lot of women in UX, and I'm lucky to be in their company. Sure, more men than women are submitting themselves to speak at our conferences, and we're taking the steps to rectify that. But our presence is there, and it's very much felt.

The only conference I've ever attended that was entirely male was Microsoft's reMIX conference in Cambridge last October. In fact I was one of ~5 women in a room of 600, but let me tell you, I didn't mind it one bit.

Maxine, Meg and Melissa all make the point that some people, not just women, need more encouragement than others. I'm thrilled that organizations exist that can provide it. But me, I've always been pretty self-motivated. As long as I have the support of my friends and family, I go full steam ahead and I don't let anything stop me.

Yes, maybe, as Shelley put it, I'm an idealist. Or maybe I'm just lucky enough to have a background that protected me from what other women have experienced. Or maybe I'm just stubborn. Whatever the case may be, I'm proud of who I am and what I've accomplished. I feel strongest as an individual and prefer to stay away from labels (even my job description doesn't fit). Definition isn't a necessary part of my life. Some people like structure and routine. I don't. No one should feel sorry for being one way or another. I don't feel sorry for the women bloggers out there. I'm just not one of them.

Samantha and Dave, I've asked myself that same question. Do I sound different in the way that I write? Do I bring a female perspective to design and usability? Do I evaluate like a girl?

To Jonathan and other men out there, I'm curious to know if the female distinction actually creates problems for you. Are there networking opportunities where you don't feel welcome? Have you come up against issues of sexism in all-male gatherings or organizations? What is the male experience like in relation to these women's issues?

Matthew, thanks for the male perspective ;)




Vicki, Steve, Rachel, thank you.





Martha, you make a great point that I failed to mention in my post. It's extremely important to note that these are only my feelings, my beliefs as a woman, a direct result of the way I was raised and the environment in which I live. I can definitely understand how other women in other generations or from other backgrounds might have had very different life experiences and who may greatly benefit from/emotionally need this type of support system. This in no way is a slight on those people. It's just not me.





And Sarah, thank you for your comments. It's not rambling in the slightest and I'm thrilled that you chose this place to lay your thoughts. Like Martha said, there is a relevant purpose to BlogHer for some people, and it may just be that it isn't the right fit for others of us. I've certainly never been intimidated by men (thank you, Mom!) and so I have no apprehension about attending/participating in/speaking at conferences within my industry. I, personally, never needed training wheels or a training bra. But that's just me.

Matthew, I find it so interesting that our shelves are almost completely different (except for Designing Visual Interfaces, Don't Make Me Think, and Contextual Design -- which I lent to someone years ago and never got back) when we do such similar work. I'll definitely dig into some of the ones you have here. Do you have others at home? Is there a difference between the books you display and the ones you read?

Toby, Yes yes YES! We should cross-post them, too, and try to involve both our readerships in a single discussion. That would rule.

Michael, thank you for raising this issue. I've been thinking about it for quite a long time, frustrated that I can't seem to get my readers to "engage" with my posts. I'd love to design the whole page around the conversation, and I'm certain that more forward web technologies would be needed.

Still, the content of the conversations would reside on the blog itself, and I still think there's an issue there. Similar conversations are being had on thousands of blogs across the web. Wouldn't it be better if there was a way to have a larger conversation, get more minds around it? Maybe we need a way to syndicate blog comments to multiple blogs -- tag the comment with the blog where it originated, but create an aggregation across multiple locations on the web. Too hairy? Too impossible?

Matt, as always, you are way too nice to me. Thank you.

To Maxine, Abi and James, do any of you write long emails on your iPhone, or are you mostly talking about text messaging? I'd love to see a video of you typing on your iPhone one-handed while walking down the street. How accurate would it be? Do you have to go back to fix typos?

I'd also be curious to see two videos side-by-side of someone typing an email on an iPhone and typing the same on a BlackBerry. Which would get done first and be more accurate?

Thank you for the link-love, Matt!

Alex, you mention clients "who would be receptive to the education," but what about clients who aren't? I have had several experiences with clients who firmly believe that they understand their customer, experience design, the creative process (when they do not), and put such rigid restrictions on the work that it becomes incredibly difficult for any consultant to produce.

We believe we are the experts and we're being paid to do the work, but there are some clients that hire us purely for the tactical, technical ability to produce deliverables and nothing more -- they do not want input on strategy or approach, and the relationship that you describe becomes impossible.

This puts the agent between a rock and a hard place. They want to best serve the client, but they also want to maintain the integrity of the consultant.

As agents, how can we identify the lack of flexibility on the client's part during the initial phases so that together with the consultant we can ultimately decide if we're better off not taking the gig -- or be prepared to get resistance every step of the way? Are there warning signs? Does the value of the agent increase in his ability to recognize them?

Christina, you're right, I was making a big leap with #2. I was trying to swing the pendulum in the other direction to find where values end and design principles begin.

"Every pixel has a job to do" certainly sounds like a design principle, but it's pretty vague and could be interpreted differently by different teams. Is that the point or should design principles be more directional? How concrete is too concrete that it's no longer a principle but a rule?

Paul, you bring up a great point: as user experience designers, our job isn't to tell the user anything, but instead to create a pleasurable environment for them. In order to do that, we have to ask questions. But we do tend to find that asking, "How can I be better?" doesn't yield the best results. People don't always know what they need, and it's our job to tease it out of them.

Maybe instead the UX statement is: "Help me be the best lover you've ever had."

I love your blog and I think you have great insights. Thanks for commenting here!

Dave, I agree that it's easy to pretend to be the person you want to be online, but to a certain extent, my "online friends" have a much broader view into my world than my closest and oldest friends do. As someone who reads my tweets, you know pretty much in real time what I'm doing and thinking and who I'm talking to throughout the entire day. I talk to my best friend on the phone every day and I see her in person about 2-3 times a week, but even then she only gets updates. I can't possibly fill her in on every single thing I've thought about or done since I last saw her, so in a way isn't there a large part of my life she's missing out on that you know a whole lot about?

Mario, I think you hit the nail on the head with the term "peer." It's more general than "colleague," implies equality and yet is certainly more impersonal than "friend." But it's like that old word problem: If some peers are colleagues, and all friends are peers, are some peers friends? :-P

I think Ben touches on this when he talks about the "Contact" distinction that some of these sites make. On Brightkite for instance, when someone adds me as a friend I'm asked to reciprocate, but I can choose whether or not to consider them a "trusted friend" and then I can add a privacy distinction between the level of detail on my location that contacts vs. trusted friends can see.

Perhaps it's the subtle difference between American and British English, but Matt uses the word "associate" in place of "peer." To me, associate is strictly work-related while peer is more often used in an academic setting. Still, both sound rather impersonal and formal.

Russ brings up the issue of "audience" and how that affects the persona that we choose to display in various venues across the web. It's a large enough topic that I don't think I'd do it justice to address here...perhaps another blog post later.

To Dan, I'm sorry for cluttering your Twittersphere. Yes, it's kinda dumb that Twitter forces you to follow anyone who you've allowed to follow you (and as a result I can no longer follow you), but I suppose it's the easiest solution for them. If it's any consolation, I won't be going to another conference for a while so it's back to regular Twitter volume for me. In any case, thanks for commenting on the blog. I'm glad you're reading it!

P.S. Matthew was quoting Blackadder. It's best to just ignore him ;)

Megan, I was really looking forward to using LoudTwitter but it only works with Atom RSS feeds and I don't think my WordPress blog has one.

Jackson and Andy, thanks for the recommendations! Definitely planning to check out Yahoo! Pipes and will see if I have a need for the Twitter Tools plugin in the future.

And to Livia and Matthew, I can't thank you enough for your kind words and support. It was never my intention to be a pest. I hoped I was providing value at the conference and I'm glad that it was worth something to you, however small. Thanks again.

Thanks for the shout-out, Matt! Enjoy Charleston.

Matt J McDonald is personally responsible for some of the items on this list.

Thank you all for the great tips!