Episode Summary
In this episode of The Digital Life, we delve into the reasons that user experience has become the "it" field of the moment. Is it the desire for great design, created by companies like Apple? Is it pressure to create universal software experiences that honor and support the BYOD movement in the enterprise? Is it the app-ification of software? Or is it something else entirely?
And, for the creative class who thought their jobs were safe, we explore the (possibly) frightening topic of the automation of knowledge work. Are no industries safe from the eventual reach of the machine? And, does it matter for humans in the long term, or will the outcome be a positive one, with free time and leisure dominating our existence?
If you're interested in conversation at the intersection of technology, UX, design, and human behavior, you've come to the right place. You can view the full show transcript as well as previous episodes on The Digital Life Web site.
Here are a few quotes from this week's discussion.
Dirk on the popularity of UX:
People who have been doing web design for a long time have been suffering because it’s been so commodified and there’s so many people trying to do it. Calling it user experience is a way to get money. Clients perceive user experience as being more sophisticated and high level but it’s on a buzzword level. They don’t even understand what they’re buying. They don’t even understand the distinctions there a lot of times. Gold rush is a really good way to put it. People are racing for what the market is rewarding right now and also for what they perceive as being a high-level thing.
It’s similar to the maturity level in advertising where marketing was the term then marketing strategy then branding then experience. It kept off shifting. When branding was the big deal, if you run around saying you’re a marketing firm, you are in trouble. The whole landscape shifted. User experience has always been the thing in software design where we live but there weren’t many people living with us in the past. Now, more people are coming into software design, user experience is getting bigger there but web design is also co-opting user experience.
Jon on the automation of knowledge work:
From last year, May 2013, McKinsey had a report called Disruptive Technologies, Advances That Will Transform Life, Business and the Global Economy. When talking about these disruptive technologies, they talk about robotics, genomics, a lot of the emerging tech that you would expect. There was an item on that list which, at least for us as software designers might raise our eyebrows, that was the automation of knowledge work. We all know that software design and other kinds of technical automation have eliminated certain types of manufacturing jobs over time, as well as some basic jobs that were associated with business such as, you don’t have a typist anymore. There are certain types of accounting tasks which have been automated as well. It’s an interesting question for us to consider when that user experience field that we were all taking about is being such a hot commodity now becomes automated, what does that mean?
