This.That. And The Other Thing.
Well, hello there. This page is a collection of my musings, articles, and so on that I have published over the past couple of years. These are mostly posts for the UX Collective or my Medium page. Some are serious, some are whimsical and others fall between them.
Enjoy!
Falling in love with the user, not the technology
Designers becoming “curators” is very dangerous thinking. Even more dangerous is the increasing number of posts claiming AI will solve our UX ills. They won’t. AI will reduce our “busy work” load by automating processes, aiding research, and so on. What they will not do is turn UX Designers into curators, merrily clicking away or writing “killer” prompts. It is a classic case of not falling in love with the User, but falling in love with the technology.
Flash Changed How We Communicate
Our business has a history that is rarely, if ever, celebrated. Think about it. Digital Media profoundly changed how we communicate, and the misfits and creatives, some of whom are in this piece, did things with Flash that had never been done before and blazed the path to today’s web and mobile media environment.
Supercharge Accessibility With Stark’s Sidekick
The promise of AI as a workflow accelerator for the UX process is a given. As I pointed out in a recent article, the great promise of AI is that AI will reduce our “busy workload” by automating processes. aiding research and so on. What has frustrated me is finding solid examples of AI doing just that. In a course I am developing for LinkedIn Learning, I found one when I encountered the updated version of Stark’s Sidekick tool for Figma.
AI’s Aversion To Risk
What is often overlooked in all the hype around AI is that the models are trained on what has already been created, not what could be created. So, there’s an aversion to risk. Because the fields of Web and UX design have developed best practices that suit the limitations of a screen-based medium, we tend to forget that the promise of AI is that we can create ideas nobody else has seen.
Ageism, The Last Acceptable Prejudice
As a 70-year-old who has spent well over 30 years teaching Digital Media, speaking at conferences around the world, and conducting seminars to audiences and classes composed solely of that “younger generation,” I have been subjected to that “last acceptable practice.”
We Need To Have “The Talk”
As a writer, ChatGPT has become a staple in my research for the books I write and the courses I prepare for LinkedIn Learning. Even so, I approach ChatGPT much like Ronald Reagan approached the Russians during the Nuclear Disarmament talks: Trust but verify.
I have a brother.
As we move through our lives, we all have profound experiences. Marriage. Birth of a child. Death of a parent. New job. Loss of a job or some other experience. There is a small group of us that have an experience that is unique to us. Discovering you are not alone in the world.
I am a teacher. It is my job.
We tend to define ourselves by what we do and I define myself as a “teacher”. That is what I do.
The Ethics of Generative AI
Take a look at this ad that I pulled together in about 20 minutes. I don’t want to talk about the aesthetics of this ad. They are unimportant. Instead, I want to talk about the ethics of this ad because it isn’t exactly what you think you are seeing..
I have a brother.
As we move through our lives, we all have profound experiences. Marriage. Birth of a child. Death of a parent. New job. Loss of a job or some other experience. There is a small group of us that have an experience that is unique to us. Discovering you are not alone in the world.
I am a teacher. It is my job.
We tend to define ourselves by what we do and I define myself as a “teacher”. That is what I do.
The Ethics of Generative AI
Take a look at this ad that I pulled together in about 20 minutes. I don’t want to talk about the aesthetics of this ad. They are unimportant. Instead, I want to talk about the ethics of this ad because it isn’t exactly what you think you are seeing..
I have a brother.
As we move through our lives, we all have profound experiences. Marriage. Birth of a child. Death of a parent. New job. Loss of a job or some other experience. There is a small group of us that have an experience that is unique to us. Discovering you are not alone in the world.
I am a teacher. It is my job.
We tend to define ourselves by what we do and I define myself as a “teacher”. That is what I do.
The Ethics of Generative AI
Take a look at this ad that I pulled together in about 20 minutes. I don’t want to talk about the aesthetics of this ad. They are unimportant. Instead, I want to talk about the ethics of this ad because it isn’t exactly what you think you are seeing..