Thread by @MrAlanCooper

I’m not saying that UX is one big happy discipline.

I’m saying that the terminology/nomenclature mess gives cover to unskilled and/or unscrupulous practitioners. 1

And while the notion of trickle-down-economics is utterly bogus, the notion of trickle-down-ethics is all too real.

So unscrupulous managers hire those unskilled practitioners so they can check the UX box. 2

And educators whose goal is to please hiring managers find it lucrative to pander to their desire for bogus practitioners.

Educators should hold the highest standards, not the lowest. 3

Silicon Valley used to be about creating great things to empower people. Now it’s all about making big bux. Only. 4

I envisioned the cadre of interaction designers as the last hope to rein in runaway capitalism in tech by refocusing development on serving users.

Sadly disappointed. 5

“Old Guard” indeed. 6

We NEED every skill in the world working hard to make great things. I don’t care what those skills are called or what labels their practitioners go by. But I do care when I see the skills fall by the wayside in favor of click-chasing. 7

Being a good interaction designer is not rocket science and doesn’t take forever to master.

Hell, I went from a standing start to writing About Face based only on first principles and some field work in three years!

You can learn this shit faster than a graduate degree. 8

One problem is that there are schools out there that will happily take your money, give you a degree in “UX,” and not teach you a gatdam thing about interaction design. 9

Another problem is that there are professional organizations that pander more to their sponsors (who sell Design System products, and those aforementioned schools) than to their practice, their standards, and their taxonomy. 10

Another problem is hiring software. It has NO WAY of knowing if someone is trained in, or good at, interaction design.

If you can get a job by deprecating your practice, the practice will get deprecated. 11

Another problem is the separation of research from interaction design. 12

Researchers find dysfunction and theorize solutions, none of which sees the light of day. Designers output trivia which gets published but accomplishes nothing. Separating the disciplines give both practices license to fail. 13