The World of UX with Darren Hood

We conclude our look at Modern UX Historical Milestones by looking at years 2012 to the present, most notably sharing information about the rise of UX education, hiring trends and progression varous types of workplaces, and history’s repeating itself between the dot-com bust and recent corporate engagement in and with UX.

The presentation on UX maturity continues, focusing on the 4th and 5th portion of Jakob Nielsen’s model, as well as discussing the general importance of embracing and having a strategy for managing the process in one’s organization and what is needed to advance beyond the Skunkworks level.

This week, Darren concludes his coverage of the topic “The Quest for UX Maturity,” with a quick recap of the segments covered previously and some key points about the final three levels of Jakob Nielsen’s UX Maturity Model. Time is also spent reiterating why knowledge and pursuit of viable UX maturity levels are important to an organization.

This week, Darren builds on the UX maturity level segments by describing and analyzing how other maturity models are structured and concluding by sharing his own supplementary UX maturity model — the UX Uncensored UX Maturity Model — stressing the need for practicality and self-awareness in order to drive successful UX operation within one’s organization.

This week, Darren takes time to present a virtual fireside chat as he tells the story of his career journey in UX. In this segment, he talks about how he made the transition into the field, highlights a few milestones, and provides some encouragement for up and coming UXers to stay the course to overcome the obstacles and challenges we face today.

UX has been in the mainstream for 20+ years. One would think its understanding would be more widespread, but several factors have limited mass UX maturity. To complicate matters more, many people feel UX is a void of standards and unity among top-level practitioners. Is UX undefined? Is UX an enigma? Is the discipline in a tailspin? In this episode, Darren will lay a foundation for this 3-part series, where he will put claims about UX’s ambiguity to rest.

This week, Darren examines another source of UX ambiguity — job titles — specifically taking a look at the rise of the product designer. We’ll take a look at job duties and qualifications within job postings from three prominent companies to help illustrate why people are confused and the issues this is causing for the UX world. 

Darren delves further into factors contributing to the cloud that surrounds UX today, focusing on two elements: 1) Expectations of and misperceptions associated with UX professionals’ functionality in the workplace and 2) The fallacy of UX/UI (or UI/UX) and how it has contributed to steering people away from an accurate understanding of the discipline.