There seems to be a bit of a trend at the moment, within developmental circles to just add a few wireframes and develop a prototype or two, and then you can declare you are across the user experience design process.
The thing is User Experience is a lot more than just a few simple techniques, it’s an entire collaborative design process, in a way it’s not just a single methodology at all.
This lack of being a single methodology may be part of the issue.
Some of you may not know this, I come from a formal science background, I trained as a scientist. However, I don’t consider myself to be one, by any stretch of the imagination. I feel more at home in the design space.
Still all that background in the science arena has allowed me to apply it to the area of User Experience design. A guess it’s like a Science of UX Design.
During last week I got to see Jared Spool keynote at IAsummit via a streaming into Second Life. Okay its wasn’t that great, the streaming not the presentation. After reviewing the presentation later. It’s apparent to me that some people maybe missing the point of methodologies.
Jared’s core comments are summed up well by Mia Northrop and Molly from NLC Internet Marketing Blog, basically he proposes that we should be moving away from UCD and start to own up to the point that we haven’t really been practicing it anyway. Thumps up Jared.
Gary Barber
I’m an independent User Experience Consultant.
I design interfaces, build information architectures, prototypes, do UX research and conducting usability & accessibility tests and audits.
I can work within your existing team or as an external consultant on a contract or adhoc basis.
You can contact me via my company, radharc.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 2.5 Australia License.
