Today I had the pleasure of connecting with Sam Ng from New Zealand and his work in building the tools for the Optimal Workshop.

Sam talks about his efforts in starting the company six years ago, and his many experiences that have lead him to the creation of Treejack, OptimalSort, and Chalkmark.

We discuss how these tools are making some of the traditional jobs of those within our disciplines, unnecessary. With that realization, there is also a wonderful opportunity to help clients create a better user experience and extend the conversation and ideas beyond what we’ve been able to offer to date.

Sam and I talk about how we’re shaped by our experiences and how we’re at a tipping point for our disipline based on the growth of the field. Sam predicts that the demand for user experience will outstrip the supply of quality user experience professionals in the very near future.

Economics, not enough time, and a lack of understanding about the work of the User Experience community have been the common reasons, from Sam’s experience, as to why organizations don’t adopt UX into work flows.

Will these tools ever replace the need for the UX profession? I argue that this will never happen and while Sam agrees with this statement he does believe that some aspects of user testing may be taken away from the UX professional. Again, this will allow the UX community to make better recommendations to clients when quick answers are required.

Sam believes there will be an interesting intersection of quantitative and qualitative analysis with the creation of tools like those offered by the Optimal Workshop.

Chalkmark, for example, is the most popular tool offered by the Optimal Workshop for the wider community at large; allowing them to do user testing in a couple of hours with limited time and budgets.

These tools are great at allowing us to ask more questions, which in turn will lead us to better answers. Evolving from a purely academic background, we need to dedicate more time to “wearing the hats” of our users and clients. With the evolution of tools available to the UX community, this will allow us the time, space, and budget to do just that!

Many thanks to Sam for taking time out of his busy day to talk with me and share his experiences in creating the Optimal Workshop.

Hope to see everyone in Toronto for the Idea Conference! If I haven’t had a chance to meet you please come by and say hello. :)

Looking forward to heading to Jamaica on behalf of Zed Jamaica with my colleague Kristina Mausser from Digital Word. I’ll be presenting a full day workshop on Information Architecture and User Experience and Kristina will be presenting a two day workshop on writing for the web. Then together we’ll be presenting a half day workshop on Social Media.