UX Communities: Starting from the beginning
Martin Belam and I (alongside Eric Reiss and Joe Sokohl) are running a discussion panel at IA Summit 2011. It’s called UX Communities: Starting from the beginning. I want to start the discussion with this blog post and further discussions across blog posts with Martin on Currybet (and whoever else would like to join in).
We know they rarely work but we hope with good planning we can pull something worthwhile off. Panels are packed with good intentions but often appear as if no thought or planning has gone into them, the panelists have not spoken before (coordinated on the subject matter at the very least) and the moderator (if there is one) is either inappropriate, dull or inexperienced (often all three). A moderator doesn’t necessarily have to be overly experienced in what is being discussed or overly knowledgable, just interested, clued up, positive and inquisitive. And the panel has to be prepared to push on a subject. Not just run through some latest work, share anecdotes and all congratulate each other on a job well done. It must demand more, take risks, be prepared to fail at least trying to challenge the status quo.
What follows are a series of ideas that are by no means limited to myself or anything the panel may choose to discuss. Any opinion is mine.
Within our discussions regarding user experience, information architecture, interaction design communities and their activities I am hoping we can push on what can acceptably be called a community and what is required for one to exist – and for individuals to foster them. There will no doubt be plenty of discussion about how one can begin say a book club meet up in your local town, but I also want to push back on some accepted requirements and question “When is a community a network and when is a network a community?” I am also hoping to touch on, as I see it, some of the potential opportunities for these communities within our towns and cities (inspired by Adam Greenfield’s recent essay Beyond the “smart city”). These are growing and present fantastic challenges.
So what is the future of our UX Communities and networks? There are so many, in countless different forms, many using similar functionality and tools. I’m increasingly realising that functionality does not equal a network. There is no need to actively try to create a “network” for your community. Your community will invariably exist utilising functions and tools already in use. London IA is a burgeoning UX community but I believe its future exists beyond online functionality like Ning. At present, the community’s members (it must be noted membership is very loose – which is exactly as it should be) are far more active across other network, communication, discussion and sharing tools and in fact in the physical world. Many key members of the London IA community don’t even visit the Ning domain – they recognise that the “real” community is everywhere, not stuck on a single server. Again, a single functionality does not equal a network. Ning is cumbersome and unrepresentative of what the network actually is – at present anyone can see it is represented by a few active people hacking Ning’s crap network tools to foster a couple of discussions. Beyond that it lists events. Lanyrd does that 100x better. There is a sense that any attempt, in any form, to control a community is deemed to fail. I don’t think communities or networks need a home they just need people and the one thing about groups of people is they find themselves eventually and don’t necessarily need a wall to lean against. A crowd will congregate when there is something to discuss. And they will use the lowest common denominator to do it.
No network, no login, no walled garden, no centre, no administrators, no monitors, no membership, no logo, no badge. Come and go as you please. Cluster around a name, an idea, a tag to communicate an event, a discussion, a conversation, a meet up, a share. Do away with messaging service built on messaging service, built on messaging service. The role and behaviour on the web and in the physical world: that is your network and where we congregate that is the community. Membership is loose and doesn’t require any control. The tag is your guide.
Back to Adam Greenfield’s Beyond the “smart city”…
How we congregate. We as a network of UX designers and information architects sew ourselves into the network of our cities and become involved in physical events, locations, places and connections of people living, working, learning and socialising together. No longer must we always sit in conference halls and only stare at slidedecks and projections and talk about websites. We need to talk about taking our skills out into a physical world that needs our skills, interests and dynamic. We live in these cities, our networks and communities exist in these cities. We have a responsibility to make them better by integrating our skills, practices and knowledge into them. Our networks should become part of a working group that undertakes the task of producing technical standards for networked cities:
“Just as the novice programmer is invited to learn from, understand, and improve upon — to “hack” — open-source software, the city itself should invite its users to demystify and reengineer the places in which they live and the processes which generate meaning, at the most intimate and immediate level.” Adam Greenfield Beyond the “smart city”
Anyway that’s a start.
UPDATE: Martin’s folow up “UX Communities: Starting from the beginning”: A debate – part two
Any comments towards @solle