Maximizing UX via roles devoid of UX: My Career Anti-pattern

Not everyone who studies/reads/graduates with a degree in user experience (UX) or a “related discipline” will practice in their daily jobs. This isn’t a judgement or an opinion, but a inconvenient truth that I am not immune to. In the past, I’ve blogged about occasional conflicts of interest between the few that promote the innate value of UX and the many that seek mastery of UX. Specifically, I cannot understand why passion for UX is met with high educational  costs, small (but growing) pools of UX job opportunities, and an absence of widely accepted/certified/utilized UX proficiency standards.

While few have advocated mixing UX design skills with coding/programming (which I completely agree with…fyi), I still believe that UX roles should bot be explicit roles, but implicit skills included in standard project roles to have an impact even remotely proportional to UX’s purported importance. UX skills should be a job skill requirement embedded within every role in every phase of the project life cycle. With this theory in mind, I’d like to announce that I’m switching my strategy and taking a more covert approach toward accomplishing my desires to advance UX…

I plan to dedicate my remaining energies toward a digital technology oriented business role(s) to bring an awareness, respect, and appreciation of UX to oft “UX-less” areas within established companies. Some will think this makes sense and some will not, but my motivations are due to the incompatibilities listed above. While UX schools are far and few between, business schools are plentiful and some employers may even cover the costs of school/conferences/training. Furthermore, there are more jobs in the field of business in general than UX and most companies are likely to recognize an MBA from an AACSB accredited institution (i.e. accepted/certified/utilized standard) versus a UX or HCI degree/certificate whose recognition is somewhat limited to Stanford, Carnegie Mellon, University of Washington, or MIT.

What role will UX serve in my future business role? Simply put, I’ll ensure that UX becomes a permanent part of the project cycle and I’ll remove the bureaucracies that cause UX practitioners to “sell their discipline’s value” more than they practice. Much credit is due to John Maeda for being the inspiration behind my alternate approach. After reading Laws of Simplicity, I conceded that Maeda must have thought the same thing seeing that he added an MBA from Arizona State University to an impressive technology and design background. The combination of skills likely played a part in his selection as president @ RISD and opened the door for his methodologies to be implemented.

I may sound like a politician, but I’m willing to bet my career and my paternal fiscal obligations that my commitment to the project lifecycle preservation of UX will make a huge financial impact on consumer facing AND an internal/enterprise projects.

For those that will inevitably criticize this post for one reason or another, the bottom line is I’m commencing my own, personal, UX anti-pattern career. As I stated, I recognize and acknowledge the possibility that I may not be able to practice UX using the criteria that some have chosen to define. However, I’m attempting a different tactic that requires courage and a humility that allows me to step aside to give others the opportunity to practice, even if it means I’m not one of them. I’m sure I’m not the first I’m willing to block downfield as long as I know that there are swift and innovative UX practitioners behind me willing to carry the football.

Report summaries can damage more than they inform

Disclaimer: I’m a skeptic, sometimes against things I’ve studied or mastered. Nothing is left out of the scrutiny crosshairs.

Jakob Nielsen recently released Kindle Fire Usability Findings, which is a report that speaks to the results of user testing and the summary of the user experience of Amazon’s Kindle Fire mobile device. Summary: I shook my head because it seems to be an example of why so many organizations don’t care for user experience and usability testing at all.

When I saw Nielsen’s summarized findings, I thought ‘If the device sold well, do the findings even matter?’. I’m sure many potential buyers of the Kindle Fire wondered the same thing. Below the fold, in much smaller text is the phrase “Our studies of Kindle Fire weren’t intended to advise consumers on whether to buy a Fire device.” Oh, o….k….. Why was this summary released to the public if the intent was not to influence/affect potential buyers? Why not charge for it, just like so many other NNGroup reports to avoid confusion?

Then, that’s when the questions/speculation seemed to pour down from my cranial computer bank…

• Who is this report for then? Designers? Developers? Managers? Consumers? All? No one?
• I’m sure Amazon did their own testing. Why would Amazon sell it anyway if all of this were true?
• If the report was speaking to the UX viability of 7” tablets, why does the summary seem to be device specific rather than device agnostic?

Furthermore, there are lots of ambiguous phrases like “magazine reading experience could be good but actually is miserable” and “7-inch tablets have either a glorious future or will fail miserably” which make me question the validity of the report (and some might question the discipline) in general.

On the other hand, you have Amazon selling/shipping a projected 3-4 million units of the Kindle Fire within the first few (~8) weeks. And yet, this is a device that has a “disappointingly poor user experience”.

Biggest takeaway from Nielsen’s summary “UX will be great if the money is there and poor if it’s not”. Sounds like a valid conclusion from any other project…This would be consistent with the links to the full 293 report ($298 for single license, $598 organizational rights) and the Usability Week Conference registration links ($769 - $3532 in the US) at the bottom of the page.

Conclusion:

Can we refrain from releasing summarized information like this whose intent is not to influence consumers but winds up eroding the perceived value of UX and usability by the general populace?

There is no Santa (UX Truth Serum)

My Head/Heart vs PSU

The most important goal for me right now is to find a way to provide for my wife and my children. I’ve always imagined that the signs of my success would labeled with the silent absence of distress on any of their faces. To protect myself in the future, I applied to one graduate school, namely in the Masters of Business Administration program in order to gain formal experience and skill in business and management. I tried my best to chose a program that had a balance of cost vs benefit and gave me the best chance of succeeding.

Last week, I was admitted into the Pennsylvania State University iMBA program and I was happy to be a part of such a prestigious university and even prouder to know that it would likely be my final academic endeavor. This week, Penn State’s board of trustees fired it’s president Graham Spanier and head football coach Joe Paterno amid a child sex abuse scandal that has significantly marred the reputation of the school and has made me second guess my decision to participate in the program…

I have strong feelings toward the who/what/when/where of the child sex abuse  situation as a father, as a human being, and as a prospective student. I try to imagine the feelings of the parents of the children subjected to unspeakable acts. I try not to imagine situations where people diffuse responsibility. I try to think about the benefits and the opportunities I will gain at the completion of the program… 

The issue at hand is simply this.. After all that has happened in the last 24-48 hours, can I, in good conscious, attend Pennsylvania State University knowing what happened there? Could I look my sons in the eyes knowing that I found a way to disconnect the alarm going off in my head and heart? Is there any way for me to complete the program and NOT cut the cables to my morality?

Unfortunately, I don’t have many other graduate level choices in the fields that I’m interested with an online delivery option with a reasonable time limit for completion. I guess I’m having a hard time with the possibility that the PSU scandal may have ended more things that I ever could have imagined. 

Should I stay (@PSU) or should I go (somewhere else)? @ me on Twitter…