Leah Buley gave the first iteration of this talk at the 2008 IA Summit. I had the pleasure of recording a follow-up interview about her presentation from UX Week over on Boxes and Arrows.

She kicks off her presentation showing videos of colleagues at Adaptive Path and how each got started into the field of User Experience, from meager beginnings:

We all come from humble origins. I think there is a tendency in this field…to hold them [well known UX designers] up as shining stars…I think if I never hear the phrase “Rock Star Designer” I think that might be OK…each and every one of us are standing at the cross roads of what we have done before and what we will do in the future.

Leah shares 5 tips about how to gain support from your organization as a UX Designer:

1. Get comfortable with pen and paper. The form signals to other people that they are allowed to share their opinions and ideas with you. It’s ultimately a facilitation tool.

2. Think “Big Picture”. Everyone should understand the decisions we make at the point at which we are making them; sharing your vision of the big picture allows for this to happen.

3. Be a good host. Start hosting workshops and open design sessions that are outside of the design process and use pen and paper to start sharing.

4. Decorate your space. People think of design as a finished state. Teams outside of design need to see there is an involved process that requires their input and ideas.

5. Illustrate what we are trying to achieve through UX. Nobody has ever created a great UX by meeting just the business requirements. A great UX is tangible and has a personality; we need to be able to express that to ourselves and others on our teams.

A must watch presentation for anyone new to the field of User Experience or those thinking about striking out on their own; brilliant ideas and insight.

Leah Buley | UX Week 2008 | Adaptive Path from Adaptive Path on Vimeo.

In his article for Interactions Magazine, Taking a Broader View of the Human Experience Experientia’s Mark Vanderbeeken notes that experience design is a human centric process and…

[s]ince we are living in a time of rapid change, our task as professionals is not just to understand the current context or anticipate future possibilities, but to help create a future world that is socially, economically, spiritually, and environmentally sustainable.

Sir Tim Burners-Lee shares a similar vision for the the World Wide Web; what he describes as Linked Data.

I liken Linked Data to that of Chaos Theory. When we study what appears to be randomness in any system or structure, patterns begin to emerge.

The beauty of this vision for the web is that it has the potential to solve long standing health issues, break down social and economic barriers, replace myths with fact, and ultimately allow us to make wise choices about our own lives and those we care about.

As Mr. Vanderbeeken points out in his Interactions Magazine article above, we’re all ultimately accountable for our future, and that of our children. If Linked Data comes to fruition, that larger than life responsibility will fall on us all regardless of your title, income, or location in the world.

Linked data is huge…there [is] data in every aspect of our lives. It’s not just about the number of places where data comes, it’s about connecting it together.

Reading Josh Porter’s book last year Designing for the Social Web I learned only 20% of the world’s population has access to the World Wide Web.

Put another way, take ten random friends from around the world and line them up with numbers 1-10 written on signs in front of them.

Then ask a friend to pick two numbers at random from 1-10. Let’s say they pick numbers 4 and 9. Have those friends step forward.

The remaining eight friends won’t be reading this blog post. Several of those people left in line are also illiterate with little to no access to educational resources for learning.

Adaptive Path has been doing some remarkable research in some of the poorest areas of India where illiteracy is the norm; resulting in the need to completely re-think the design of mobile devices.

An estimated 40% of India’s rural population is unable to read text or numeric information.

I was talking with Chris Palle today @chrispalle about next steps for me and how I would like to evolve the UX Workshop.

In the short term, I’d like to interview people new to our respective industries of IA, UX, IxD, and capture their ideas. After all, communities of practice can’t evolve if they don’t continue to look to those entering the industry.

Over the longer term, I would love to travel the world to do similar research that Adaptive Path has completed and then share those experiences as a presenter at conferences like UX Week and Idea.

MobilGlyph: Making Data Tangible from Adaptive Path on Vimeo.

At UX Week last year I had the pleasure of meeting Adaptive Path’s Teresa Brazen; at the time she was trying her hand at podcasting. In the midst of interviewing speakers from Google, StoryCorps, Current TV and others for Boxes and Arrows, we took a couple of hours to share experiences and ideas about publishing podcasts.

Mostly I shared all of the mistakes I made, (I’d give you the exact number, but I honestly can’t count that high) so she wouldn’t have to experience the delays to publishing as I did when I started.

After talking with her for only a few hours during the conference I knew she was going to go on to have great success. In my experience people who are driven, open to new ideas, and interested in learning from others are also the ones who tend to be the best hosts, regardless of the subject matter. Teresa has all of these qualities in spades!

My business partner and friend John Wiseman @johnwisemanca over at Brolly helped Teresa recently with her new site, Tea with Teresa.

To date she has interviewed some the leading minds in experience design including: Comedy Central’s Audrey Chen, Adaptive Path’s Peter Merholz, and Designer Phil Robinson to name a few.

Be sure to stop in for tea with Teresa soon. You can subscribe to her podcast in iTunes and be sure and visit her personal site; turns out Teresa is an incredible artist as well.