I see two paths that will exist concurrently. The first is internally focused, where our contributions will happen in the form of workshops, long term strategic process planning and program development. This kind of work helps create companies with little familiarity with a user centric approach to build that competency.

Another path will also include strategic outlook. With greater understanding in market trends, business/technology constraints of the business, we will find ourselves influencing VPs on new products and services instead of evolving or optimizing an existing solution already predefined.

I question how much long we will be doing these interaction design tests such as RITE method, heuristic evaluations, usability in general. The reality is going usability by people will compete with platforms designed to use statistical models to logically determine the “best” output. Imagine not just websites, but applications that can run A/B and multivariate tests on the fly to inform a better designed interface. What’s the value we add?

If anyone else has had success with any “Tools” would love to hear from them.

UX Consultancies, I think also suffer from their own form of egocentrism, which is that it should be as easy for clients to adopt UX as it was for themselves. But UX consultancies, by their nature are 100% sold on the philosophy, and recruit people with the awareness and the skills to practice it.

Clients’ UX teams are often a tiny silo in a huge organisation that doesn’t know, or doesn’t care about UX. The problem is that many consultants are set up to deliver very little except usability testing, reporting and the odd bit of wireframing. Therefore the only way they can transfer their knowledge is through the art-and-crafts method of ‘watch me and copy me’.

Beefing up the UX capabilities of a clients should be more about an attempt to upskill one or two individuals, as their organisation’s ability to leverage their skills over time is likely to be extremely limited. Proper development of UX within an organisation requires a strategy, executive support, training and tools. You can’t expect clients to pick all that up by following a recent HCI graduate around for a few days.

I know, I was once that graduate!