I get that "user experience" has become default in the business world as an umbrella term and I often play along to get my paycheck. But my own personal problems with "it's all just UX":
1. (this is admittedly a bit hair-splitting) One technically cannot design a user's experience since an "experience" is deeply internal and self-generated. Your experience is your own. One can only design the stuff someone engages with to somehow shape the quality of that encounter or dialogue via information/visual/interaction design, per Luke's articulate breakdown of those terms and what I articulated here: http://www.ghostinthepixel.com/?p=197 2. "User" is objectifying and demeaning. We're the only profession other than the hard drugs business that is ok with calling people "users". (so does that make us "pushers"?? LOL) I like how Apple job titles say "Human interface" or "Human experience", a bit more encompassing of the total human dynamic. 3. IMHO, the only real "user experience designers" are Cirque du Soleil, Disney Imagineers, and IMAX filmmakers, and top restauranteurs/chefs. NikeTown and Rainforest Cafe too, etc. Everyone on this list should really make an effort to read John Dewey's "Art as Experience" for the true origins of the concept of experience (& expression) as it pertains to design. It was written in the 1930's and strongly influenced Moholy-Nagy at IIT as well as CMU's Design School via Dick Buchanan (now at Case-Western). I think as you read it you'll have some moments of self-realization of how nothing is really new in terms of "user experience" as hawked by today's companies marketing or pitched by HR recruiters, and gain a deeper sense of the humanity or "soul" of design. Without being armed with such an intellectual basis, then throwing the phrase "user experience" around (especially by designers) is tantamount to empty buzzwordism, succinct yet vacuous and ultimately meaningless. No designer worth his/her salt would dare do something meaningless. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Posted from the new ixda.org http://www.ixda.org/discuss?post=40553 ________________________________________________________________ Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ....... disc...@ixda.org Unsubscribe ................ http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines ............ http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .................. http://www.ixda.org/help
