Like wildfire, word of the demise of UX agencies is spreading through the community.

Sparked by the acquisition of Adaptive Path, the closing of Smart Design in San Francisco, and an analysis by UX influential Peter Merholz, the intelligentsia are hailing the decline of UX and design agency work in technology. Exacerbating the situation are rumors that a variety of other agencies are in trouble, trying desperately to get bought as they prepare for a shutdown.

This is the last in our series of four articles intended to help clients forge more successful and mutually beneficial relationships with outside design agencies. Read Skip the RFP, Start With a Test Project, or Culture is Key.

This is the third in a series of four articles intended to help clients forge more successful and mutually beneficial relationships with outside design agencies. Read Part 1, Skip the RFP and Part 2, Start With a Test Project.

This is the second in a series of four articles intended to help clients forge more successful and mutually beneficial relationships with outside design agencies. Read Part 1, Skip the RFP.

This is the first in a series of four articles intended to help clients forge more successful and mutually beneficial relationships with outside design agencies.

The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) has been a recent target of attack. From the thoughtful-but-over-the-top Huffington Post article to the recent hit piece from Vox, online publications with high visibility are taking aim at the MBTI. While some of the criticisms of the MBTI in these pieces are valid, their inflammatory conclusions are not ("totally meaningless"?!?! Really?) This divisive approach serves to create a chilling effect of embarrassment and self-doubt for the people who use tools like the MBTI to augment their journey of self-understanding.

Each day, more and more people go thru their lives with their head tilted downward and their thumb manipulating a handheld computer. This is not class-based behaviour: these expensive machines and/or the data plans that govern them are being accessed as readily by the cashier at Burger King as the corporate CEO or suburban soccer mom. The prevalence of these devices and the addictive behaviour that governs them infects people of all ages, professions, and places in society. In the process, we walk, drive, eat and talk while maintaining the familiar head tilted downward and thumb dancing feverishly that signifies our participation. Indeed, if "Seinfeld" were a modern show, we must assume there would be an episode featuring George Costanza attempting to use his personal computing device while "pleasuring" his befuddled girlfriend-of-the-moment.

Remember when Spam was just meat in a can? I'm not quite sure when "spam" became a daily and often painful reality of my life - sometime after 1994 but before 2000 - but if it wasn't for spam filters I suspect email as an online tool would already be obsolete. If you create something good, that people pay attention to, and can make money, it is inevitable that the parasites, crooks and "capitalists" will soon follow to piss in the once-pristine pool.