2006 User Experience Significant Happenings? David Armano Asks the Question.

David Armano asked his network of passionate marketing professionals what the most significant User Experience events of 2006 were and some really interesting answers came from the question. I personally felt that I experienced and witnessed bits and pieces of many of these things. The exciting part for me is that we are really just at the beginning of all of this. I guess you could say 2006 was about beginning to understand what all these things mean for the future and participating in some of these evolutions now to be able to better understand.

As someone wise once said....
"Tell me, and I will forget, show me and I might remember, involve me, and I will understand. --Ben Franklin"

The answers that are presented by Armano and co-creators feel very familiar to me. I believe these are the big themes from the year.

Here's the list of answers he gives in his post:

2006: The year of...
PC (Power Consumer)
Connection
2.0
Business + Design
Video
Creativity
People

I like the last one the most. At the core of all of this is people. We connect to each other for various reasons. The tools that we are creating, co-creating and utilizing are allowing us to connect much more fully as people. I attended the Information Architecture Summit early this year after recently re-reading The Cluetrain Manifesto. That book reminds us over and over, it's about the people.

We have a ton of opportunity and challenge in front of us because as all of this is very exciting, it presents significant complexity and can be overwhelming. One of the big things I hope to see for 2007 is tools that help people. I don't know what those tools are yet, but if something enables you it needs to be accessible, perhaps dare I say simple. This is the user experience dreamer in me but the more accessible the more people will participate. The more people that participate, the more value that each individual will derive from the overall experience.

As it's the end of the year and a good time to think about the year ahead, in 2007 I will focus on thinking about ways to create experiences that guide people to the communication and creative avenues available to them. I know how much fun I have participating, I'd like to share that with anyone that is interested.

  Posted by evoljennifer ( Dec 13 2006, 05:47:47 PM MST ) Permalink Comments [0]

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