The late great Douglas Adams in his Hitchhikers Guide to the Universe (thats the book, not the crappy film) made a reference to a planet that was dying. The people on that planet decided to flee the destruction in three great space arks, the A Ark containing the Innovators, Inventors, Bosses, Thinkers and Movers and Shakers, the B Ark containing all Middle Managers, Facilitators, Salesmen, Accountants, Risk Assessors and Telephone Sanitizers and the C Ark containing all Workers and Doers. The plan was that the B Ark was sent off first so that everything would be well organised, sanitized and risk free when they arrive.

Can you see where this is going? The B Ark was sent off and the inhabitants set in stasis, and, well, after it had gone the others found out that the planet wasn’t in danger after all, so they could stay.
So, lets think. On which Ark would Usability and Customer Experience Practitioners be? Myself, I’d like to travel on the A Ark, hence my provocations about leadership, vision and such like. I’d prefer Usability and Customer Experience to be used as a force for innovation and change rather than risk and defence. At an Aiga Event some months ago, James Woudhuysen was very provocative about aspects of usability, claiming its rise was due to its defensive nature, not its power to innovate. Good for mitigating risk, bean counter stuff, he claimed.

James was also quite harsh about UX attempts at evolutionary innovation … filling in experience ‘white space’ on a BMW car by using screens on top of the door arches. A bit sad? Perhaps pandering to the whims of the moneyed elite… So,are we simply the telephone sanitizers of the new media? Or can we be better than that?

The culture is right now I think for a shift from a risk culture to a innovation culture. I think that reflects in micro cultures too, like usability-as-defensive-methodology to user-experience-as-innovation-methodology. Lets make changes and grab this damn thing. Hence my obsession with film production methods

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