Khal Weir

I’ve heard User Experience design referred to as the most prestigious and pretentious job title in the industry or even plain bullshit, but really I think its the least understood. The problem, for me starts with the title. As Edward Tufte famously said “only two industries that refer to their customers as ‘users’”. The term ‘users’ dehumanizes’ the audience, so lets call them what they are - customers or even better use personas. By asking “what would Bob do here and what would Alice expect?” vs “what is a user going to do here?” immediately you are thinking differently and your product will be better for it. So let’s lose ‘user’, ok? When great rock acts like KISS play live shows they aim to excite, delight and exceed the expectations of their fans; in other words they craft an experience. When I’m working on a project I have similar goals, I don’t want an interface to be merely usable I want to do inspire, engage and trigger an emotional response with the audience.  Restauranteurs, car manufacturers, hoteliers, interior designers, film directors and more share these ambitions. Just like the projects I work on, their products are all experiences;  so I feel ‘experience’ is redundant from my job title too.

I strongly believe I work in what is currently the most exciting field in the industry, but its so poorly understood I sometimes fear that it isn’t taken as seriously as it should be. Perhaps I’m right and its in the name; my work involves research, analysis, prototyping, testing, information architecture, interface design, copywriting and more - yet the ultimate goal is designing the best product possible.  I am not then, a product designer?