This document discusses the concept of "cargo cult thinking" and how it relates to common misconceptions about user experience (UX) design. It summarizes that UX design is often misunderstood and viewed narrowly by outsiders as only involving wireframing or documentation, when in reality it is a specialized field that focuses on how users perceive products and services. The document advocates that UX design should be viewed as a team effort involving various roles like strategists, information architects, and researchers, rather than the work of individual "unicorns."

1. Presentedby@andybudd
ofClearleft
The UX of User Experience

2. The Legend of
John Frum
“John promised he’ll bring
planeloads and shiploads
of cargo to us from America
if we pray to him”
“Radios, TVs, trucks, boats,
watches, iceboxes, medicine,
Coca-Cola and many other
wonderful things.”

3. Cargo Cult Thinking

4. Object
Fetishisation
The Legend of
John Frum

5. UX Cargo Cult

6. The Cult of the
Wireframe
Many people think
User Experience Design
is Wireframing!

7. Cargo Cult
Plane

8. The Cult of the
Wireframe
Others view UX Designers as
the documentation people!

9. The Popular View
of UXD
Designers who wireframe
or
Documentation People

10. User Experience
Doesn’t Exist
Photo by Marc Thiele CC Some Rights Reserved
'UX Professional' is a
bullshit job title. It's just
a way to over-charge
naive clients.

11. Few people have actually worked
with a proper UX Designer

12. A lot of the information about User
Experience Design is lightweight
and potentially misleading

13. The tale of Mr
McArthur Wheeler
Stupid is as stupid does

14. Confidence
Experience

15. There is a
depth of knowledge

16. Don Norman founded
the first UX team in the 90s

17. The UX Community has
a Different View

18. The natural result of design
The way people perceive a product/
service

19. Any more than pu ing out a fire
Makes you a Firefigher

20. Designing your own home
Doesn’t Make you an Architect

21. The Idea that we’re
All Designers
Is Really Unhelpful

22. A specialised group
The natural result of design
The way people perceive a product/
service
A field of practice

23. The UX Team
Is like a team of Marines
The Strategist
The Information Architect
The Interaction Designer
The UX Lead
Which makes me this guy
The Usability Researcher

24. A specialised group
The natural result of design
The way people perceive a product/
service
A job
A field of practice
A role

25. A conceptual designer who focuses on
what a product or service does,
and how it behaves,
rather than what it looks like.
Defining the Damn
Thing

26. Jesse James Garre ’s
Model

27. User Experience DesignDan Saffer’s
Model Information
Architecture
Architecture
Industrial
Design
Usability
Sound
Design
Visual
Design
Content
HCI
Interaction Design
er
er

28. ExS
Experience
Strategy
IxD
Interaction
Design
UR
User
Research
IA
Information
Architecture
So ware
design
Web
design
Business
strategy
Market
research
Design
research
Library
science
Design
strategy
Device
interface
design
Jason Mesut’s
Model
Industrial design
Business
consulting,
Marketing
HCI
Psychology

29. What shape UX
Designer are you?

30. Overinflation
of UX
The Peak of
Inflated Expectations
The Trough of
Disillusionment
The Plateaux of
Productivity

31. The Certification
Debate

32. Designers Rock
We need more of them

33. UX Design will always be a niche

34. What’s in a name? That which we
call a rose by any other name
would smell as sweet

35. There is still room
for Unicorns

36. Web Designers

37. Product DesignersDigitalFull Stack Designers

38. Be er as a team

39. Than individual
sparkel ponies

40. Presentedby@andybudd
ofClearleft
Thanks