User Experience is NOT an industry
A step-wise explanation for my unsolicited opinion
Idea
Apologies, the title is an intended trigger. I am just here trying to support my argument that user experience is better understood as a discipline —as opposed to being seen as an industry, saturated with design thinkers.
History
The early, sporadic mentions of the term ‘User Experience’ in 70’s/80’s, placed it in the realms of human-computer interaction. When Donald Norman popularised the term in the 90s he said, “I invented the term because I thought Human Interface and usability were too narrow: I wanted to cover all aspects of the person’s experience with a system, including industrial design, graphics, the interface, the physical interaction, and the manual.”
Opinion
Clearly, the evolution of the term ‘User Experience’ is proof that it covered a range of interactions including systems and industrial design even 30 years ago. And it is undeniable that for the last 15–20 years, the association of UX to a booming tech industry has been a win for businesses.
However, it is disappointing for a subjective geek like me, to have the term isolated in the tech space. I don’t particularly enjoy when I have to explain this term to my peers, friends or even coworkers at times! Moreover, it has been coined using self-explanatory naming conventions that someone, basically familiar with English can guess?
If UX was a person, this would be my message to them — why settle for an industry when you can be omnipresent! I am not suggesting that UX should have commitment phobia; maybe they can just have a belonging to each of our daily lives. I would like to see UX hanging out in customer service, hospitality, tourism and e-commerce as a real person, not only in the form of an interactive app or digital transaction. In the world of AI, I would imagine UX being our ultimate human connection — a way to form relationships, spread smiles.
Philosophy
Experience. The word is both a noun and a verb. A qualitative metric, perhaps? Intangible, non-measurable and yet, you can describe it. It is what you say when you want to express how you felt, what happened or what thoughts you had in a particular situation.
We are all users. UX professionals are users too. We are all in some way attuned to digital products, eating out at restaurants, travelling far-off places, decorating or organising our homes, manoeuvring workplace coffee machines, and more. In a nutshell, humans are always using a service or commodity while they’re in an experience. With a concept so ubiquitous as experiences — we ought to give it more real estate in the world, no?
Ulterior Motives
This is a prelude to a short series of articles I intend to write following this blog. I want to tap on various everyday life situations we pass by which can be analysed as good or less-than-good user experiences. If this goes well, as UX professionals, we might be able to take our love for design to the people we care about, in simpler yet striking ways.
