Quick review, half way through the User Experience Professionals Association conference, live from Seattle for its 25th edition.
Two days of workshops and conference under the belt (it’s not all suits and ties here anyways) and two visions of the practice seem to be clashing, both claiming the term “UX”.
On one corner, the UX that is seeking the right solution. One word is on all those lips: shorten! Speed-up the user experience research, creation and validation work. Do almost-the-same-thing, or at least something UX as fast as possible. Produce. Deliver. At the extreme of this spectrum is the OOUX approach (Object Oriented UX), proposed by Georgia Spangenberg and Ed Hertzog of EY-Intuitive, that promises to shorten the development time of a digital product by 30%. Just like that! A packed room and a whole lots of questions, as you can imagine…
On the other side, there is the UX that is looking for the right problem. Leo Frishberg’s presumptive design technique (PrD) is the perfect example of this approach. Accessibility, sustainability and professional ethics are the hot topics here; you can feel the tension on the panels.
Otherwise, Seattle is great. I was sharing my admiration for the city’s transit system to a local (the conference centre, just a step away from the train station, have good transit links with the tramway, monorail, electric trolleybus and regular bus) when he blew the whistle on me: “You clearly haven’t been out of the city center!”
Damn right. More research.