The Future of UX Has Nothing To Do With Technology (Has It Ever?)

In this presentation Jeff shared his own professional experiences & perspectives over his 15 year career - in addition to the insights of authors Raj Patel, Ethan Zuckerman, artists Robert Bateman, Henri Matisse, Pablo Picasso, the Canadian surgeon Dr. Brian Goldman, and lessons learned from interviewing the biggest names in User Experience over the past five years.

In a storytelling format, Jeff illustrated why the need has never been greater to put the technology away in an effort to stop the proliferation of reactionary environments; to the creation of spaces focused on trust and respect.

Transcript

1. The Future of UX... Has
   Nothing To Do With
   Technology
   (Has It Ever?)
   Jeff Parks
   @jeffparks
   @followuxleader
   

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2. - Sir Howard Stringer
   “All great companies have a kind of row boat
   mentality. They’re rowing hard, but they’re
   looking at the past.”
   - Sir Howard Stringer
   

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3. “I can’t get my boss to understand we are living in the information age. Trying
   to control the flow of ideas is impossible. How do I wake him from this
   fictional world he’s created?” - South Africa
   If I have to draw one more detail in these wireframes I’m going to lose my
   mind! How can I get the Board of Directors to understand the interactions
   without worrying about the color of the buttons?” - United States
   “We aren’t anywhere close to having services requiring an application for mobile, yet
   here I am being tasked with creating the solution that will allow our company to
   ‘compete’ with the rest of the market. Why?!” - Brazil
   “My Director can barely figure out his email and yet I have to implement his
   suggestions in creating a great design? It’s gonna be scary!” - Australia
   “Marketing and Communications are stuck in the print world. I don’t tell them how to
   publish magazines, so why are they telling me how I must design?” - Poland
   Future Leaders of #UX
   

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7. That’s the system that we have! It’s a complete
   denial of mistakes. There are two kinds of
   physicians - those who make mistakes and those
   who don’t... Those who have lousy outcomes
   and those who have great outcomes... Errors are
   absolutely ubiquitous...we really aren’t [dealing
   with] the problems as we should.”
   - Dr. Brian Goldman
   

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8. Purpose Will Instruct Process
   

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9. ESSENTIAL SKILLS FOR
   LEADING #UX TEAMS
   “The classic, pervasive seduction to
   designers has been to find a solution
   instead of the truth.”
   - Richard Saul Wurman
   

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10. ESSENTIAL SKILLS FOR
    LEADING #UX TEAMS
    “In order to know what’s good,
    we have to establish what’s
    true!”
    - Dan Klyn
    

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11. ESSENTIAL SKILLS FOR
    LEADING #UX TEAMS
    “The fact the we have a lot to learn
    doesn’t mean we don’t know a lot
    already!”
    - David R. Dow
    

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12. “...Nothing is more useful than
    water; but it will scarce purchase
    anything; scarce anything can be
    had in exchange for it. A
    diamond, on the contrary, has
    scarce any value in use; but a
    very great quantity of other
    goods may frequently be had in
    exchange for it.”
    - Adam Smith
    (Wealth of Nations 1776)
    

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13. “We need to look at the media systems
    we’ve built, over hundreds of years in the
    case of newspapers and a dozen or so
    years in the case of social media, and ask
    whether they’re working the way we need
    them to in a connected age. If they’re not,
    we need to rewire.”
    - Ethan Zuckerman
    

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14. Real World Collaboration
    

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15. “Forest Therapy is where they take
    stressed out office workers in
    downtown Tokyo... they go for a
    walk in the woods for under an
    hour... Their blood pressure comes
    down, Cortisol levels come down
    (fight or flight)... all they do is go for
    a walk in the woods.”
    - Robert Bateman
    

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16. “The future will belong to the
    nature-smart—those individuals,
    families, businesses, and political
    leaders who develop a deeper
    understanding of the transformative
    power of the natural world and who
    balance the virtual with the real. The
    more high-tech we become, the
    more nature we need.”
    - Richard Louv
    

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19. “The task of knowing is no longer
    to see the simple. It is to swim in
    the complex.”
    - David Weinberger
    

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21. Technology Will Be Viewed As A
    Possible Solution
    

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22. ESSENTIAL SKILLS FOR
    LEADING #UX TEAMS
    “We’re very good at heart
    attacks. We’re very bad with
    Cancer... Large organizations can
    be mobilized when you face a
    crisis. They are much more
    difficult to mobilize when
    they’re facing a slow trend that
    is eating away at [them]!”
    - Dr. Fareed Zakaria
    

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23. “It is more reasonable to suppose a
    thing to have been invented by those to
    whom it would be of service, than by
    those whom it must have harmed.”
    - Jean Jaques Rousseau
    

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24. “... if we want to maximize the benefits
    and minimize the harms of connection,
    we have to take responsibility for
    shaping the tools we use to encounter
    the world.”
    - Ethan Zuckerman
    

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25. Creative Corporate Culture
    

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26. ESSENTIAL SKILLS FOR
    LEADING #UX TEAMS
    “You’ve got cry without weeping, talk without
    speaking, scream without raising your voice!”
    - U2 ‘Running To Stand Still’
    

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27. “Creativity is not something that
    occurs in a particular region of the
    cortex. Nor is it like emotions or
    balance, which are rooted in
    particular structures and circuits
    outside of the cortex. Rather,
    creativity is an inherent property of
    every cortical region. It is a
    necessary component of
    prediction.”
    - Jeff Hawkins
    

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28. ESSENTIAL SKILLS FOR
    LEADING #UX TEAMS
    “The real role of leadership in education
    is not and - should not - be ‘command
    and control’. The real role of leadership
    in education is climate control - creating
    a climate of possibility!”
    - Sir Ken Robinson
    

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29. ESSENTIAL SKILLS FOR
    LEADING #UX TEAMS
    “I want to do better. I want to produce better stories. I want to
    do better plays. I want to encourage the best of storytellers - the
    ones coming up - because I believe that ‘sending the elevator back
    down’ is a great way that we can all use success to benefit others.”
    - Kevin Spacey
    

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30. Trust and Respect
    

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32. ESSENTIAL SKILLS FOR
    LEADING #UX TEAMS
    A Future Conversation Between
    The Future Leaders of #UX...
    “OH: Do you remember, back in the day, when
    all the UX professional was known for by the
    business community were personas and
    wireframes?”
    

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33. Thank You
    Merci Beaucoup
    Tout Le Monde UX!
    Jeff Parks
    @jeffparks
    @followuxleader
    

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