Experience Planning Department
I heard a quote recently about the number of people who rely on technology without the skills to use it. The quote was paraphrased, and I haven’t been able to track it down on the web, but apparently this famous quote dated back to the time of Walt Disney. Obviously, the amount of technology available back then held no comparison to today. Computers have been so pervasive throughout American Culture — on our cell phones and ATMs, as well as our laptops and desktops — that it stood to reason that eventually, someone would need to start looking at how we connected to all of our new technologies.
The majority of my professional years have been spent in the Development Department. I’ve learned that coders don’t typically consider how their .NET makes the end user feel. My best days were spent in the Project Management Department, prototyping the applications before the requirements were delivered, simply to ensure that the interface made sense to the end user. However, with all these different departments, I often wondered why the Users never got a Department of their own? We would Market to them and Support them, but we seldom asked if it made any sense? Instead, we sent complicated instructions on how to use it to the Translation Department.
One can only imagine how excited I was to discover that people were looking at how we connect to technology. They call themselves Experience Designers, or User Experience Designers in relation to Human-Computer Interaction. Just recently, thanks to Bridge Worldwide, I have learned that Design Companies are now hiring entire teams of Experience Planners. The Users have their own Department! This marks a momentous change in the way we connect to technology. Thanks to the Experience Planning Department, all of us who rely on technology will soon have the skills to use it.
