–Engage

Last night, Nov. 29, 2005, the local New York City IxDA group had an event entitled, “IxD NYC Style!”. Five panelists representing fairly different types of user experience environments came together in the JPMorgan Chase building in Midtown (Thank you JPMC!!!) in front of 100 attendees.

The event displayed in high contrast the broad differences and yet similarities between the different panelists who work in divergent types of design environments: industrial/product design, advertising, media, online service/media, and financial services.

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As I was walking to the subway today listening to my iPod, I noticed that in a Phish song I barely ever listen to, a familiarity to the pedal setting of at least one of the guitar players. Then I thought about other great musicians and at least for some extended period of time, there is a lot of overlap in style of music usually followed by a great leap, then a return, and then another leap (if they are truly great that is).

I then thought about our pull towards the familiar. We tend to go to the same restaurants, and theatres, and neighborhoods, even though others may be easier to get to or have something just as worthy to sample. Part of this is that fear of being disappointed, or wasting our time just to find out that it wasn’t all that good. Part of this is just well, comfort.

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Nick Finck recently wrote a blog entry entitled, Shut up and Dance. The article basically is a treatise expousing that it is time to throw off our separate identities of IA, Usability Engineer, IxD, HCI Professional, etc. and all get along and play nice together–and well Dance! What follows here is my response to him and a comment made by Scott Berkum on the same blog entry.

Enjoy!

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People (good people) like Joel Spotsky and David Weinberg explain why they don’t like a term. But Stowe Boyd sees it differently.

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A new online zine for the User Experience community was launched. It’s called UXMatters.

I’m very excited that another voice is pushing the message and method of UX into the ether. It shoudl be good!

I also want to take this opportunity to say that Boxes and Arrows will be hoppin’ again soon. The parent of UX Zines has had a change of Editorial Management and things look very exciting. Liz Danzico and Javier Velasco have taken the reins of the editorial staff of B&A. Liz has told me herself that exciting things are afoot. So keep an eye out!