Ah Ha Moments

The discipline of user experience (UX) is changing business. Apple is the shining star now, but the 'field' is becoming a focus in a broad spectrum of organizations.

Have you seen Mark Hurt’s Good Experience blog?  Start by reading the intro and then check out the short post about a Cleveland Clinic that just hired a Chief Experience Officer. 

I've been thinking more about the concept of a successful design-driven business strategy, innovation and user experience. How are other thought leaders defining this topic or ‘field’?  Well, the User Experience Network offers one interesting example:

UX is an important and rapidly emerging field concerned with the design of anything people experience: a web site, a toy, or a museum.

UX is inherently interdisciplinary, synthesizing methods, techniques, and wisdom from many fields, ranging from brand design to ethnography to library science to architecture and more.

I was thinking about this more when I scanned an article about William A. Wulf in this week's Science Times. Wulf just left his position as president of the National Academy of Engineering, the engineering arm of the National Academy of Sciences.  I paused when I read about how his passion for creative innovation began.

His innovation won praise from colleagues and a bonus in his check. But the real reward, he said, “was that moment of creation, that moment of seeing the problem and seeing a solution.” He said, “once you have had the creative thrill of designing something that solves a real human problem and that people use, it’s addictive.”

One of the reasons that being user-experienced focused is so hard is because user experience spans disciplines and organizations– design, engineering, marketing, support, services, and sales. It goes beyond simply solving a real human problem, to doing so in a way that is gratifying, fun, easy, etc.