Published Wednesday June 6th, 2012
Hello to members of the user experience community, UPA members, and our colleagues around the world.
I’ve had the opportunity over the past 24 hours to listen to the community as it digests, either here in Las Vegas or around the world, the meaning of our announcement. For those of you who don’t know what I’m talking about, yesterday at the UPA 2012 conference, UPA treasurer Ronnie Battista announced that the UPA is no longer. We have started a brand new organization, the UXPA, or User Experience Professionals Association. Ronnie spent a great deal of time and effort on that talk, and I want you to be able to experience it. A transcript of that talk is linked here. Please note that this is in raw format and only represents a rough facsimile of the actual talk Ronnie delivered.
While Ronnie’s talk certainly introduces the change, you’ll find that it is remarkably and intentionally lacking in details. When speaking with our members and leaders of the UX community while considering this change, we realized that while we have been above average in meeting the needs of the UPA community, attempting to support the needs of 50,000+ UX practitioners is a different thing completely. The salient point from Ronnie’s talk is this: we want you, the UX community to determine, guide and shepherd this new organization. We launched this change at a conference on Leadership recognizing that we, the current board, are not the people who should determine the direction of the UXPA, or what UXPA is in the first place. It’s all of you.
That being said, we do know one thing: there is a distinct and immediate need for a global, modern, innovative professional organization for User Experience Professionals. To those of you tweeting and blogging, ask yourself only one question: Are you a User Experience Professional? If you are, we consider you part of the UXPA. You have a home and a voice here, whether that voice be positive or negative at the current time. In fact, I would implore you to get involved, to help out, to collaborate. Criticize, but put your money where your mouth is, and chip in. We want to work with you. There is plenty of time for discussion, but now is a time for ACTION.
This much is clear: the turf war stops here. It must. We can spend the next ten years arguing which sub-discipline “owns” User Experience, but it won’t come to anything. I call on my counterparts in all other UX-related professional organizations to look at ways we can work together. This is not a power play or land grab. With humility and respect, I would entertain any and all discussions about collaboration, integration, and investment with our colleagues from IxDA, ACM-SIGCHI, AIGA, IAI/ASIS&T, STC, HFES, British HCI, APCHI, the Service Design Network, and any others. Between these groups and the current talented and passionate membership of UPA, together we will truly be the premier global professional association supporting people who work in this field. A field that we cannot define alone. We envision a loose confederation of organizations that doesn’t ‘unite’ us so much as it connects us. For our part, we will invest the reserves we have built up to move this mission forward.
This is an exciting time for our industry, that is for certain. The future will be determined by those who are willing and able to take bold action. If you are in that group, email me your thoughts at president2012@uxpa.org, get involved in our discussions on Twitter or LinkedIn, and let’s get to work.
Rich Gunther
President, User Experience Professionals Association
If you hoped that the turf wars would end, why did you change the name?
Laura,
Thanks for your comment. We believe that User Experience has for the past 12-15 years been the umbrella term that encompasses the majority, if not all, of what WE do. And by WE I mean all UXers, not just UPA members. But no one organization owns it. We’re not saying UPA owns it. We’re saying we’re creating a new organization, a shell, if you will, where UX professionals can come and colloborate, whether they are IAs, designers, researchers, ethnographers, content strategists, etc. We’re also saying that this might be the biggest test of what we as UX Professionals do: with UXPA, we are designing a true end-to-end user experience, and my hope is that it (whatever “it” is) will be a showpiece for those outside of UX, for the benefit of ALL of us in UX.
I think a common misconception about this announcement is that the current UPA leadership is going to run this organization. Here’s the kicker: I’m term-limited, as are all of our Board members. Laura, are you a User Experience Professional? Do you derive value from being part of an international professional community? If so, run for the Board this Fall, propose changes, and/or get involved.
I applaud the changes in general to UPA — now UXPA. I always thought the organization was trying to improve the discipline and help its membership. I just don’t agree with the name change.
My personal situation does not permit me to get involved formally in the organization, but I plan to follow discussions and activities and voice my opinion. I plan to be an active member.
Awesome, Laura. If you have any specific recommendations, let us know here or at feedback@uxpa.org. Thanks!
So, it seems like time to move the main conversation about this Open Letter from Lou’s blog – http://louisrosenfeld.com/home/bloug_archive/2012/06/response_to_an_open_letter_to.html – to here.
I think a good first step would be to have someone from the UPA board address a few of the questions & concerns that Lou & the commenters mention. There are many, so pick a few. Maybe the board responses belong in other threads. Does not matter to me, but that seems like the best way to move the discussion forward.
Keith,
We’ve actually been collecting a list of blog posts that talk about the name change, and are likely going to post this as a new page. Lou’s post is a good one, but there’s a LOT of others that make their own salient points, too. Ronnie Battista and Cory Lebson, our Treasurer and Director of Strategic Partnerships, have been in touch with Lou about his concerns. If there are specific comments he makes that folks want the “Board position” on, let me know and we can post that information here.
I think it’s amazing how much people care about this, whether it be positive or negative feedback.
Jared said something in a tweet to the effect of “there are UX methods that UX professionals can use to define their UX organization.”. That rings very, very true to me. We as a community need to put our money where our mouth is, and design this organization as an end-to-end user experience. That’s not just for our benefit, but also so we can show the world, in the clearest of terms, the value of what we do. Call it “eating our own dog food” or practicing what we preach, but the most tangible benefit of being part of this new organization SHOULD be that you can point to our “stuff” (site, conference, publications, etc.) as best-in-class examples of UX done right.
What do you think?
Rich
I see lots of things as “design problems” that can be addressed with the methods we do every day. The things that I see UX professionals & those interested in UX as topic needing have less to do with user interface, website and event design and more with organizational & culture change. How to promote these larger organizational changes are what many advanced professionals are struggling to do in their “day jobs” so I think we have the opportunity to blaze new trails in “design driven organizational change” at the UXPA & related organizational levels. As we figure out how to “change ourselves”, then we can then apply these new methods (or new flavors to old methods) in our client and employer organizations. In a few years, I’d love to hear people saying “I helped change the UX community and now I am taking what I learned to help change the rest of the world”.
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