If it is of even the slightest interest to you I still suggest you take all points with a generous pinch of salt.

Many thanks for reading.

- Was never meant to be taken literally and was meant to be taken very much in general
- Some people did take it far too literally and even thought I was talking directly about them and a particular company and a particular job
- Was meant to spur on anyone to Do something about the work they are doing if it was making them unhappy (if they wanted it, only if they were looking for some kind of push). No one is much use to either themselves or their employer (if they have one) if they are unhappy. It is easy to rant/rail/moan/gossip about a job but if it ain’t working out and you are doing something that is wasting your – and other’s – time, then you really owe it to yourself to do something else.
- Believing you can change most things is the easy bit. To keep believing is where it gets harder.
- It’s not the fact that it’s work, it’s the fact of what the work is.
- And contrary to popular believe, you probably build better relationships with clients when you are contracting/providing services.
- Recruiters when trying to hire and not explaining what the work involves (and more often than not having no understanding of the work itself) encapsulates everything wrong with UX recruitment.
- If your not passionate go do something else.
- The previous post really seemed to hit a spot with quite a lot of people as though I had single handedly encouraged a dismantling of all responsibility.
- The previous post wasn’t directing people to walk straight out the door. It was a reminder to always think carefully about what you are doing, where you are and how your working life is working out for you. Small adjustments can make the differences.
- No piece of writing let alone some inconsequential blog post is for everyone. If you don’t need encouragement, if you are happy, then it wasn’t for you. But there are some people who have itches and itches that keep itching and these people need to keep moving, doing their own thing. (Maybe the post was for them, maybe it wasn’t.)
- No need to complain about encouraging folk to do their own thing. Some folk are cut for the long haul and some get those itches. Everyone needs to encourage people flows. Itches shouldn’t be allowed to bleed. You don’t need to get up people noses. There maybe unsettling periods as different people find their comfortable positions and their place in the world. Reward the right people with the right things for them. It is no simpler than that. Hostility rarely attracts loyalty. We are all different and we all have different skills. There isn’t just one solution.
- In terms of the UX design community in London, you can’t have everyone in a full time job and in the same way you can’t have everyone contracting, running their own little shows. Balances have to be struck.
- Great people come in many many different shades and don’t always work/operate exactly the way you want them to. Don’t try and box them in.
- You should go it alone/start your own thing up for the right reasons. Don’t just leave a job to coomand higher rates. That’s a shit reason. Don’t do it for money and less responsbility. Do it because you want to make something, create something. Do it because you want to be able to select projects where you can make a difference, take responsbility, work hard. Deliver.
- Don’t expect everything to just be delivered to you on a plate. Nothing comes easy, least of all being worthwhile, doing something worthwhile (either on your own or in collaboration with others).
- The action is to start something, be something, take risks, don’t panic, don’t fear, explore, think beyond your horizon, don’t be dominated by money don’t think in terms of money. Try it.

//@solle
//London

Popularity: Popular in (but not limited to) large multi-national organisations especially those new to building products that come into direct contact with actual human beings, design agencies with poor planning and do anything attitudes, and advertising, marketing and design agencies fast tracking ‘UX’ departments.

It has been said that at any given time in London, UK that up to 70% of those who title themselves ‘UX designers’ are working on or similar to Black Hole UX-style projects.

(A) conclusion: Maybe we are really all just designers but some of us are lucky enough to work with real people who really use the thing/s we are designing.

(B) conclusion: Remember – on a more positive note – “user experience is dynamic, because it changes over time as the circumstances change” which is also the same for project management and planning so black hole can quite easily and quickly change to sunny days.

Quotes from Wikipedia

//@solle
//London

Initially the main driving forces were that the Sense Loft just gets a little ‘hot and clammy’ during the summer months, I felt the need for a little recharging, and that I wanted to spend a couple of months concentrating efforts (with Andrew Travers) on the newly launched London IA Podcast and spend some time on a series of investigative walkshops (instructions, photos) with Andrew Travers, Ben Bashford, Claire Rowland, Nic Price and Dan Lockton.

However, this “summer break” has become a tad more enforced by the fact that I’ve broken my ankle. So those stairs at Sense Loft are centainly out of the question for a while, any walkshops will certainly only be on paper, but podcasting will continue – and go from strength-to-strength (we are about to record London IA Podcast 2). And my recharging will go ahead.

In the meantime, I’m hoping to hop along to Interesting and mix up some odd music stuff with Jason Mesut and Ed Chocolate and plan for a busy September running a EuroIA Predux, attending the Do Lectures, running a workshop at EuroIA and welcoming back London IA on 28 September (pencil in the date at this point) with Jonty Sharples and Ben Bashford. There may also be a special one off London IA event earlier in the month if I can secure a certain person’s time.

There you go. Enjoy the summer.

//@solle
//London

A few questions to ask ourselves to keep a perspective. I also wrote previously about the need for conferences to develop healthy outlooks for their futures. Read it if you like.

1-If you were to spend three days listening, watching, reading in your day-to day zone rather than attending a conference would you learn more or less than if you had attended one? Do you learn more equivalent to what you have paid?

2-Do you meet enough people to make it worthwhile? Do you set out to meet people to make it worthwhile?

3-Where do the most interesting conversations take place? In the hall or in the foyer? Would you attend a ‘conference’ that just happened in a foyer? Have you ever attended a conference and spent the whole time in the foyer?

4-At a conference is your time better spent reading and researching than listening? Or is it better spent with a balance of the two? Do organisers organise programmes too full of talks?

5-Are you more likely to discover more about your field of interest/ the domain field you work in if you attend a conference in another field, domain? Are UX conferences relevant enough? Might we not learn more from attending an architectural conference or philosophy talk? Are we designers getting a balanced enough diet?

6-Everyone crowding to a UX conference is most likely to lead to saturation of discussing the obvious and the least profound – “equivalent to a steady diet of personal hygiene tips”. Are you demanding more or are you comfortable with gentle reminders of the obvious and the quiet satisfaction that you are in the know?

7-Are you asking enough difficult questions? And are we suspicious enough?

8-Is the proliferation of sketchnotes the reason everyone’s look the same? Is their popularity the sign of people’s need for acceptance? Do they really assist in clarifying and the better understanding of talks and subjects? Do they help us better to think or just to remember?

9-Why are not more people challenging the way conferences are organised? The way presentations are delivered? Where is the hunger for new experiences?

10-We need to accept more than ‘good enough’. Good enough is not acceptable for our work so why should it be for a conference we attend. They need to be better then good enough.

//@solle
//London

Think about all *the internets* you frequent on a regular basis on desktops, laptops, smart phones, mobile phones, tablets, games consoles, TVs, projected on the wall. All the contexts you are used to. Then take away all these contexts and think of all those websites and web services again. Think of them with no *limited* context, no limits. Think of them anywhere, everywhere, everything. No obvious seams, beginningend.

What would you do if the work you usually did was only a minuscule part of the potential of your skills?

Are you thinking beyond your understanding of what actually constitutes interaction design/user experience/information architecture work? Are you creating constraints where none should exist?

For a minute, just think what would you do if there was no more website work? No more mobile applications to design. Have you started thinking about the interconnected city and services around you, your interface with the city, town around you? The one you work in, the one you live in, the ones you pass through. Do you care? Or is it someone else’s problem? Who is this someone else? Some of us need to be that someone else.

The ‘internet’ as we understand it is just … a small island in an ocean. And the tip of the rock on that island … A vastness beyond present human comprehension. There are ideas and notions attempting to gain comprehension – every grain of sand with its own IP address? – but really smart people have only tasked themselves with indicating to others that we really have no idea except that things will just get exponentially weird and every part of your life is going to be strange. I think Moore’s Law may just become a lot less of a law.

So interaction designer/user experience designer/information architect…

We all need to think more in terms of networks and less in terms of DESKtops, LAPtops, MOBILEphones, SMARTphones. Limited differentiation is dead, we need to start thinking in terms of input and output, the city as interface and network in front of you, as part of you, operating alongside you. A balanced approach is vital though to ensure “the interface doesn’t become our experience of the city, but helps to enhance it”

What are you doing about it two dimensional interaction designer, information architect? Are you sitting forward, alert listening or are you slumped in your seat, eyes glazed over “someone else’s problem”? You might just be the person that is needed. This might just be your calling. Take an interest, this affects us all.

We are limiting ourselves by only thinking in current terms. The way we approach things/problems now will be ineffective for future problems. In fact there is no way we can comprehend the scope of future design problems, begin to comprehend solution paths from our current approach to problem solving. We shouldn’t necessarily try believing that we have to know now how to solve them. We just have to be prepared that it is all going to get very different and not a little bit weird.

Expect nothing. Be prepared for anything and everything.

In the next post we will begin discussing some specifics.

Please do consider joining us on one of our #walkshops around London. Keep an eye on #londonia and @london_ia

Thank you to @agpublic @byekick @bashford @clurr @nicprice and of course @pixeldiva

//@solle
//London

Martin Belam & Claire Rowland at The Sense Loft

Martin will be presenting a version of his “Come as you are” talk that he successfully presented at the Polish IA Summit. If you would like to check out the presentation in advance it is available here. In person in the intimacy of Sense Loft Martin will no doubt greatly entertain us with his story of becoming a successful and renowned information architect.

Claire will be joined by Chris Browne to present a version of their Design beyond the Glowing Rectangle talk (also recently presented at the Polish IA Summit). They will discuss how the digital world is breaking out of ‘glowing rectangles’ to imbue everyday objects and environments with connectivity and the ability to process data. This heralds a whole new level of complexity in user experience research and design. Moving beyond the screen means not just usability, but interusability: creating intuitable and meaningful interactions with multiple devices that span many interconnecting services.

In this presentation, they will introduce a view of the core user experience design and research challenges with which creators of ‘internet of things’/’smart object’ systems and services face, and will propose approaches by which some of these challenges may be tackled.

(You can preview the presentation here.)

With our favourite sponsors: Zebra People

And of course our wonderful hosts Sense Worldwide and The Sense Network

TICKETS (details of availability)

Once upon a time there was (probably) a designer who started calling himself a User Experience Designer. Some colleagues overheard him and thought “I’ll have a bit of that” and a bit later they too started calling themselves User Experience Designers. Later that same day some of these User Experience Designers went to the pub and had a natter about their new titles. In the same pub there were some other designers who worked elsewhere and a gaggle of Information Architects and Front End Developers and they couldn’t help but overhear this talk of User Experience and later when they got home they also thought “I like the sound of that User Experience Title Thing” and the next day at work they too started bandying new titles and buzzwords about. Soon some of these newly-titled Designers and Information Architects started writing about it and others begun reading about it and many thought “Fab, this sounds like me, I too am going to call myself -User Experience Designer-”. Quickly others pitched in. All sorts. Everyone wanted a bit of the User Experience Job Title Action and it was clear everyone and anyone was welcome to it (some smart alec even thought to start calling themselves a UX Designer).

The months and weeks went by and everything seemed ok in this brave new world of job titling. Occasionally a Librarian or an Information Architect with their heads buried in Richard Saul Wurman would look up confused, but generally everyone just got on with things. A few of the early adopters started thinking about what it all meant but generally talk was local and anyway no one was really 100% sure what they were talking about.

Then one day an inquisitive mind from a marketing department strode into town. He too had heard all about this User Experience business and was keen to find out more. He put himself about and sure enough without too much difficulty found out all he thought he needed to know to be able to add this new plume to his cap. When he arrived back home many of his more strident friends asked him about this new colourful feather in his cap and they too liked the way “User Experience Design” rolled off the tongue. Again, it wasn’t long before they too were contentedly running their fingers through their new feathers.

Now it felt as though the gates were well and truly open and it wasn’t long before the town was bustling with an array of visitors, from advertising executives to design college professors. The streets thronged and the talk was cheap. Everyone wanted a bit of the User Experience dollar – and everyone took it. There did seem to be plenty to go around.

It was at about this time that a few of the designer types who were the first to re-title themselves started thinking that they might just have a handle on what the User Experience title actually meant. They wrote a few things down, so did some of the later adopters, and they all found plenty of time to discuss it but the truth was agreement was sketchy and conversations were awash with greyness. There was common sense but common ground was patchy. Discussions were healthy but inconclusive. Ownership was tenuous.

Meanwhile, more developers, marketeers, planners, advertising executives et al continued to stream into town to hear about this User Experience thing. They continued clamouring at the discussion hotspots, all excited about the opportunities this new elixir might deliver.

Now, some of those early adopters and pioneers who were busy trying to clarify what User Experience meant began getting a little sniffy about all these new arrivals. “What right do they have coming here and taking our job titles?” But there was little they could do apart from discuss more, write more, plan more and work out more. 

And to this day that little town of User Experience continues to fill and throng, packed with discussion and thrills, finger pointing and charlatanry. A town like any other, but one that is searching for the meaning and implication of adding User Experience to a job title, to skills and to business offerings.

And the moral of this little tale my dear readers? We are often as guilty of the very things we are so quick to criticise in others.

Any comments to @solle or below

Written on Writer OSX (beta)

Michael Blastland

How do you design for doubt? When we think of data, we think of hard facts. But what if they’re soft? Michael will suggest that they are usually a lot softer than we think, but that it’s easy to be misled – and to create graphical designs that mislead. He will talk about the data in data presentation and invite the design world to change the way people see uncertainty.

Chris Heathcote – Urbicomp and the new new media

Ubiquitous computing and physical computing mean that every action in the real world is potentially an interaction design problem. Chris will explore the new media we have to play with and show some examples of how urban computing is changing the way we live.

All ticket details here / Poster on Flickr

Round up of main points

1. Signing up to multiple networks and attending multiple events – does this make you a participant of the UX community? Being present is not enough
2. Not necessarily starting from the beginning but starting from anywhere, anytime, anyhow
3. Importance of never stop trying to do something different and to expand interest base. Never settle for the status quo. Do the unexpected (or at least find out if it is unexpected).
4. Functionality doesn’t make a network.
5. Would ‘community principles’ help in the way agile principles have helped software development?
6. 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.
7. Community members are invariably more active in the areas they use day to day – Twitter, Facebook. Don’t force them to use more functionality.
8. People really want to do things in the physical world – using the digital to get to the physical (meet people, attend things).
9. The real community is everywhere, not stuck on a single server.
10. Any attempt, in any form, to control a community is deemed to fail.
11. Communities don’t necessarily med a home. They just need people. People will self organise using the most accessible tools available.
12. A crowd will congregate when there’s something to discuss.
13. Membership is loose and doesn’t require any control. Community is based on activity.
14. Do away with messaging service built on messaging service built on messaging service.
15. Our communities and networks should become part of and integrate into the cities we live in.
16. Doing stuff will build a community.
17. Within London there is a progressive and non-centralised community of mentoring going on. They happily complement existing more formal programmes like those offered by organisations like IAI).
18. Sold out events. Don’t complain, do. Get out there and start organising your own stuff. The UX community needs variety.
19. Don’t be scared to take events out into the city.
20. The peer-to-peer UX job network. Get out there, get networked, do some decent work – get involved. When this is strong in your town, you know the community is doing ok.
21. Fewer rules. No barriers to entry, no hierarchy, no committee, no permissions
22. Activities, groups, meet ups can all co-exist quite happily and don’t necessarily have to co-operate or synchronise.

All the blog posts by myself and Martin

UX Communities: Starting from the beginning #1
UX Communities: Starting from the beginning #2
UX Communities: Starting from the beginning #3
UX Communities: Starting from the beginning #4
UX Communities: Starting from the beginning #5
UX Communities: Starting from the beginning #6
UX Communities: Starting from the beginning #7

Take away

Can we build a set of agreed guidelines for those looking to establish, build, expand a UX design-related community in their home town?

Ramble on UX job networks

There are many recruitment companies providing services to the burgeoning UX community both for permanent and contract opportunities. However, many of the more established people in the UX community prefer to steer clear of recruiters (some are as less impressed with them as they are with estate agents) even though a few of them provide a decent service and are trustworthy and honourable. Many prefer the “peer-to-peer” UX job network. Here there are no rules of engagement or membership hoops to jump through. There is just getting out there, getting networked, being liked and doing some decent work. From that point people will offer you work directly and word will filter through that you are trustworthy and can actually do what you say you can do. The satisfaction of gaining work (and also passing on work to others) by word of mouth with no motive of financial gain is extremely rewarding. There really is no bullshit. Far fewer “email me your CV in Word 97″ requests and far more concentration on actually providing UX services that produce results. Caution should be observed whenever discussing job or contract disgruntlement as word travels quickly across such a well connected community. This isn’t always a bad thing as bad employers/contracts should be outed but involvement in criticism can become complicated.

When this word-of-mouth-UX-job-network is strong in your town, you know your UX community is doing ok.

These job networks also highlight that even when membership numbers burgeon in your UX Community (London IA is fast approaching 1,600 signed up members on the Ning-hosted pages), there is the sense that the community is physically smaller than you think (especially when you keep bumping into the same people even in a metropolis the size of London). The laws of community state a strong active centre with many smaller groups of less active and interchangeable people orbiting. The people in the centre you keep seeing are the ones that keep things going. Without them your UX community would be far less active (and strong). But the orbiters keep the breadth of interest and tend to draw new people in regularly.

No rules

Ultimately, I think your UX community should have no rules, no guiding principles, no committee, no permissions, no hierarchy, no best UX community. No one has the right to say they are in charge – if they were elected then maybe the election was a waste of precious energy better spent doing. A community should have no walls or barriers to entry. A community is ultimately just a group of groups and activities.

There is just doing. Like sticking posts in the ground and congregating around them. Activities, groups and meet ups should spring up and state their claim whenever and wherever they want. They can all co-exist quite happily and don’t necessarily have to co-operate or synchronise. Overlapping is fine. There is a huge audience and many different interests. The more touchpoints the better. The UX community doesn’t need organising or a committee to decide what is best for it.

So my advice to you – just start doing.