World Information Architecture Day 2025 - UX at a Crossroads

User Experience stands at a crossroads: will we live up to our potential to design a better world? or will we be co-opted by “product management” or another business buzzword?
Looking backwards, this talk will show how UX has repeatedly failed to create a better world, drawing on industry data from Nielsen Norman Group, Baymard, MeasuringU, WebAIM, and others.
Looking forwards, this talk will argue that UX must resist hype, say no more often and collaborate less often (you read that right), and become a true profession — in order to be able to design a better world.

1. UX at a Crossroads World IA Day March 7, 2025 Joshua Randall Product Manager, The Home Depot

2. The Always Asked-For Link to the Slides tinyurl.com/XXXXX

3. Bachelor’s degree, Philosophy , 1998 Master’s degree, UX Design, 2018 1 big philosophical concept 2 philosophical quotes innumerable times I ask “why?”

4. Agenda Imagine This Future (and Paint It Black) Looking Backward Caledonian Antisyzygy Gresham’s Law (Applied to Design) The Depressing Data Looking Forward Resist Hype Say ‘No’ More Often Collaborate Less Often Become a True Profession (and Get Good) Caledonian Antisyzygy, Redux

5. Imagine This Future

6. Punchline: This Future is Now image source : When a Stranger Calls (2006 version)

7. A Scrabble Word Worth 23 Points syzygy / sɪz ɪ dʒi / any two related things, either alike or opposite antisyzygy the joining together of opposites Caledonian Antisyzygy “In the very combination of opposites —the Caledonian antisyzygy — we have a reflection of the contrasts which the Scot shows at every turn. He has made allowance for new conditions , in his practical judgement, which is the admission that two sides of the matter have been considered .” sources : Merriam-Webster Dictionary; Collins Dictionary; G. Gregory Smith, Scottish Literature (1919)

8. “The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposing ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function. One should, for example, be able to see that things are hopeless yet be determined to make them otherwise.” – F. Scott Fitzgerald

9. Agenda Imagine This Future (and Paint It Black) Looking Backward Caledonian Antisyzygy Gresham’s Law (Applied to Design) The Depressing Data Looking Forward Resist Hype Say ‘No’ More Often Collaborate Less Often Become a True Profession (and Get Good) Caledonian Antisyzygy, Redux

10. Gresham’s Law “Bad money drives out good.” – attributed to Sir Thomas Gresham (1519-1579), English financier and advisor to Queen Elizabeth I source : Economic History Association, “Gresham’s Law”, eh.net/encyclopedia/ greshams -law/ Where both good and bad money enjoy similar legal-tender status, and where all money must be accepted, the employment of bad money becomes a dominant strategy in what amounts to a Prisoners’ Dilemma game in which both sellers and buyers participate.

11. Gresham’s Law Applied to Design No, it’s not an exact analogy. People are not keeping good design to themselves while using bad design for others. But bad design is easier and cheaper ( like debased currency ) compared to good design. “Just copy what Google / Apple / Microsoft are doing.” Let’s take a look, shall we?

12. Material Design (Google) source : Google Material Design, “Shape” page, m3.material.io/styles/shape/overview

13. Human Interface Guidelines (Apple) source : Apple Human Interface Guidelines, “Sheets” page, developer.apple.com/design/human-interface-guidelines/components/presentation/sheets

14. Fluent (Microsoft) source : Microsoft Fluent UI, various web-components pages

15. Can you tell the difference any more? source : various Tab components (guess which is which)

16. Flat Design Has Inherent Usability Problems Flat design is a web-design style that became popular around 2012 . It is still widely used today, and its overuse can cause serious usability problems. One of the biggest usability issues introduced by flat design is the lack of signifiers on clickable elements . Since flat design’s emergence in 2011, Nielsen Norman Group has been a vocal critic of its inherent usability issues. Our primary objection to flat design is that it tends to sacrifice users’ needs for the sake of trendy aesthetics . source : Nielsen Norman Group, “Flat Design: Its Origins, Its Problems, and Why Flat 2.0 Is Better for Users”, Kate Moran, September 27, 2015, nngroup.com/articles/flat-design/

17. Yet Flat Design Continues to Dominate sources : Citibank, Capital One, and KeyBank mobile apps (iOS) as of March 2025

18. And We’re Still Stuck with Infinite Scroll sources : Google Shopping, “Best Things”; Nielsen Norman group Despite all these known problems… Difficulty re-finding content Illusion of completeness Inability to access the end of the page Accessibility problems Increased page load Poor SEO performance

19. Physical World Design Isn’t Afflicted by Gresham’s Law image sources : too many to list; see slide notes 1950s 1980s 2020s

20. Why is UXD So Susceptible to Gresham’s Law? Because copying bad design is easy and fast. “The iterative process relieves them of having to perform rigorous planning, thinking , and product due diligence (in other words, interaction design).” – Alan Cooper, The Inmates are Running the Asylum “Less-skilled engineers [or designers] are likely to take shortcuts based on what’s easier to code [or to design].” – Kim Goodwin, Designing for the Digital Age

21. Agenda Imagine This Future (and Paint It Black) Looking Backwards Caledonian Antisyzygy Gresham’s Law (Applied to Design) The Depressing Data Looking Forward Resist Hype Say ‘No’ More Often Collaborate Less Often Become a True Profession (and Get Good) Caledonian Antisyzygy, Redux

22. WebAIM Million: No Real Improvement source : WebAIM Million 2024 report, webaim.org/projects/million/ percentage of home pages with detected Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) conformance failures over time; lower numbers are better

23. SUPR-Q Score Changes: From Terrible to Slightly Less Terrible source : Jeff Sauro, MeasuringU ; various studies (see slide notes) original article’s chart was mislabeled “SUS” Score, but these are actually SUPR-Q Scores We’re not exactly crushing it. 43 52 News 26 41 Wireless Carriers 69 62 Flowers 9 SUPR-Q Dating Apps Social Media 53

24. Intr a net Success Rates: No Improvement source : Nielsen Norman Group, Intranet Usability Guidelines 3 rd ed. (2011), www.nngroup.com/reports/intranet-usability-guidelines/ 2001-2002 (Study One) 75% success rate (“meager”) 2004-2005 (Study Two) 81% 2010-2011 (Study Three) 74% How could the intranet design community’s work go from below average, to [adequate], to below average again after more than 10 years of experience and technology changes? This decline comes in part from organizations that traded usability and employee efficiency for easy-to-deploy technology solutions with the latest trending features.

25. Overall E-Commerce UX Performance source : Baymard Institute, “End of Year Performances”, baymard.com/ ux -benchmark/chronicle Why are e-commerce websites getting worse?

26. source : Baymard Institute, “End of Year Performances”, baymard.com/ux-benchmark/chronicle 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 2020 2021 e-commerce checkout process These data cover 10 years . Why didn’t the worst sites get markedly better? 17 sites added in 2019

27. sources : Our World In Data (child mortality), Baymard Institute (e-com checkout process) Child Mortality compared to Poor- E-com Checkout

28. Life Expectancy compared to Mediocre+ E-com Checkout sources : Our World in Data (life expectancy), Baymard Institute (e-com checkout process)

29. Anecdotal Evidence Also Suggests UXD Has Failed 3 Mile Island nuclear plant melts down due to confusing and faulty indicator light (1979) John S. McCain destroyer collides with Liberian tanker, killing 10, due to poorly designed checkbox (2017) Hawaii erroneous ballistic missile alert panics world due to poorly differentiated list options (2018) Jeep Cherokee’s Monostable shifter causes 101 crashes, 38 injuries, and 1 death, due to unclear interface (2016) 20-year-old commits suicide after misinterpreting confusing Robinhood trading app U.I. (2020) Air Inter Flight 148 crashes into mountain, killing 87 people, due to poor U.I. (1992)

30. Looking Forward Resist Hype Say “No” More Often Collaborate Less Often Become a True Profession

31. Artificial ‘Intelligence’ Artificial, yes. Intelligent, no.

32. ChatGPT Makes Up Stuff If used as a brainstorming tool, ChatGPT's logical leaps and confabulations might lead to creative breakthroughs. But when used as a factual reference, ChatGPT could cause real harm, and OpenAI knows it. Not long after the model's launch, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman tweeted, " ChatGPT is incredibly limited, but good enough at some things to create a misleading impression of greatness. It's a mistake to be relying on it for anything important right now. It’s a preview of progress; we have lots of work to do on robustness and truthfulness." In a later tweet, he wrote, "It does know a lot, but the danger is that it is confident and wrong a significant fraction of the time." source : “Why ChatGPT and Bing Chat are so good at making things up”, ArsTechnica , Benj Edwards, April 6, 2023

33. Devs Can Review ChatGPT’s Code? Umm… source : Slashdot.com (various dates within past 18 months)

34. So-Called AIs are Word Salad Generators NLPs [such as] ChatGPT do not understand the meaning of the text they generate. [That text] may look appealing, and we might even infer that the words in the salad mean something. But that's just the problem—we infer the meaning. It's subjective.   source : Indi Young, indi in your inbox (email), April 6, 2023

35. Word-Salad Generators Reflect Our Own Thoughts Back to Us (Like Gaming ‘Oracles’) source : Oracle tables from the game Ironsworn , by Shawn Tompkin ; dice rolls via Google Reject Dream

36. The Gartner Hype Cycle

37. Hype Cycle 2002 source : “Hype Cycle for Emerging Technologies, 2002”, via Pinterest, pinterest.com/pin/253186810279135285/

38. source : “Hype Cycle for Emerging Technologies, 2012”, Gartner Research, gartner.com/en/documents/2100915

39. source : “What’s New in the 2022 Hype Cycle for Emerging Technologies”, Gartner Research Maybe it fell into the trough? (which Gartner won’t show us for free anymore) Where’s the natural-language stuff???? “A model to simulate customer behavior and preferences” to use for testing (!) and personalizing interactions.

40. source : “Spotlight on 2024 Gartner Hype Cycle for Emerging Technologies”, Gartner Research 2 years later and this terrible idea is still 5-10 years out. Maybe it’ll disappear. Amazingly, not a single technology has ever been marked ‘obsolete before plateau’…. “providing inputs, in the form of text or images, to specify and confine the set of responses for desired outcomes”

41. A Useful Antidote To Decades of Hype We're terrible at making predictions. Especially about the future. An alarming number of technology trends are flashes in the pan. Lots of technologies just die. Period. Tech insight is often correct, but the implementation isn't there. We've been working on a few core problems for decades. Some technologies keep receding into the future. Lots of technologies make progress when no-one is looking. Many major technologies flew under the Hype Cycle radar. source : Michael Mullany, linkedin.com/pulse/8-lessons-from-20-years-hype-cycles-michael-mullany/

42. Looking Forward Resist Hype Say “No” More Often Collaborate Less Often Become a True Profession

43. Who Has Power in an Organization? Legal Finance I.T. Security Those who can say ‘no’.

44. “If we must choose between them, it is far safer to be feared than loved.” – Niccolò Machiavelli

45. Looking Forward Resist Hype Say “No” More Often Collaborate Less Often Become a True Profession

46. Question (for you to contemplate silently) Within the last year, how many times have you been invited as an active participant in any of the following: code writing; marketing material creation; sales strategy. Total them up and answer… 1 or 2 3 or more Consider: how many times did you, UX-er, invite others as active participants in your decisions and processes? Why are we doing this?

47. Stop Being Collaborators in Our Own Demise We let ‘Product Management’ steal our stuff. Market research wants to claim UX as a sub-discipline. And it seems that developers gonna develop, regardless of what we design. (More on software development later.)

48. All of the examples I’m about to mention were from so-called professionals. Days of the week listed out of order. ( Because UX didn’t specify what order to put them in. ) “You have been in line for 0 minutes.” Enter your claim ID in a format that doesn’t even come close to matching the one on the postcard you received. “Please wait 9 hours 84 minutes to begin.” A bill for “$27.1 dollars”. ( Because UX didn’t specify always to use two digits. ) Those We Collaborate with are often Incompetent, Obstructive, or Both

49. Looking Forward Resist Hype Say “No” More Often Collaborate Less Often Become a True Profession (and Get Good)

50. How is UX Design Doing as a “Profession”? Our name for ourselves stinks. ‘Design’ is a terribly overloaded term. ‘User Experience’ is infamously squishy. And speaking of ‘users’….

51. “There are only two industries that refer to their customers as 'users': illegal drugs and software.” – Edward Tufte author of The Visual Display of Quantitative Information , a great book with a not-so-great title

52. How is UX Design Doing as a “Profession”? Not very how. image source : original Winnie the Pooh drawing, via Bibliodyssey

53. NNg’s 100-Year View of the UX “Profession” source : “A 100-Year View of User Experience”, Nielsen Norman Group, nngroup.com/articles/100-years-ux/

54. Number of People in Selected Other (Real) Professions, U.S. sources : AICPA; CareerExplorer.com; NCARB; Interior Design magazine; AND; BLS; Nielsen Norman Group Year Accountants (CPAs) Architects Interior Designers Registered Dietitians 2010 646,000 104,270 87,500 80,000 2020 666,600 122,000 112,000 110,150 2030 748,400 125,300 120,000 115,100 * using NNg estimates and assuming U.S. accounts for 25% of world total UX- ers (*) xxx 37,500 250,000 2,000,000 Percentages with Master’s Degrees (or equivalent): Accountants (CPA): 90% Lawyers: 68% Architects: 48% Registered Dietitians: 45%+ (master’s required as of 2024) UX- ers : 15% (?) Interior Designers: 6%

55. UX Lacks Many Attributes of a Profession source : Spins on User Experience , Keith Instone , 2021, spin.dexterityux.com Criteria of Real Professions Does UX “Profession” Have This? Full-Time Occupations Yes Training and Certificates No (those that exist are not widely recognized and many are bunk) University Programs (Degrees, Labs, Research) Yes, although weak on labs and research Body of Knowledge No International, National, and Local Associations Yes, although more for practitioners / afficionados rather than professionals Standards and Standards Bodies No Ethics No Licensing No Recognition by Governments to Self-Manage or to be Regulated No

56. Looking Forward Resist Hype Say “No” More Often Collaborate Less Often Become a True Profession (and Get Good)

57. Expertise is the First Step to Trusted Advisor Trustworthiness = Credibility + Reliability + Intimacy Self-Orientation source: The Trusted Advisor , David H. Maister , Free Press (2000), p. 69 UX keeps messing around here… … when this is what business values *first*

58. Speak the Language of Business Numbers. Especially money ($ € £ ¥ …). But also other metrics the business cares about. Zack Naylor’s Mad Libs formulation: I recommend we <design decision> Because we learned <supporting research> This will help us <relevant success indicator> So that we can <overall goal statement> without numbers here, no-one in business will listen to you (nor should they)

59. Steal *Their* Stuff It seems that developers gonna develop, regardless of what we design. Design systems haven’t helped. Figma’s “inspect” mode gets ignored. Therefor, we’d better learn to code. (Everett McKay told us this a while ago.) You only need 3 chords to rock, and you only need 50 HTML elements to HTML. CSS fundamentals also helpful. JavaScript if you’re feeling frisky.

60. Battlefield Triage Visual Design is mortally wounded. Let it die. Interaction Design often shoots itself in the foot. Bandage this foot. And put the gun down. Information Architecture is capable of getting back into fighting shape. Prove that bad IA costs money. Say ‘no’ when asked to compromise good IA. Specify exactly how info shall be architected.

61. How Do We Prevent the Dark Future? Don’t Give Up Hope Get back to user-centered design fundamentals; those haven’t changed.

62. “Always one can see good and bad on each side… so of course one ends up doing nothing. Perhaps that’s what evolution requires, to leave the field free for younger, unencumbered minds, and those not afraid to act. … All societies are like that; the damping hand of the old and the firebrand youth together.” – Iain M. Banks, Use of Weapons

63. The End Yes, I really said these things: Resist Hype Say ‘No’ More Often Collaborate Less Often Become a True Profession (and Get Good) Rant back at me: [email protected] linkedin.com/in/joshua-edward-randall/

64. Slides I Didn’t End Up Using, in the Interests of Time

65. NNg Intranet Guidelines Iterative Design Frequent User Testing Simplify, Standardize Unify the Navigation Use a CMS (Content Management System) Xxx Frequent User Testing xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx Improve Search [Nav] Use Page Templates [part of a CMS] Be Agile [= Iterative] Xxx Xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx Update Navigation Use CMS Advances 2001 2010 2019

66. Is Dramatic UX Job Growth Plausible or Desirable? sources : various, plus data analysis by the author

67. Popular Jobs of the 1950s source : Business Insider magazine citing U.S. Census Bureau data Industry 1950 2017 Change Logging 187,314 89,998 -57% Laundering, cleaning, and dyeing 696,742 295,395 -58% Blast furnaces, steel works, and rolling mills 691,184 270,367 -61% Water transportation 212,979 74,362 -65% Primary iron and steel industries 282,922 88,234 -69% Apparel and accessories manufacturing 1,006,386 207,023 -79% Tobacco product manufacturing 104,689 20,286 -81% Railroads and railway transportation 1,436,681 254,836 -82% Yarn, thread, and fabric manufacturing 897,266 107,607 -88% Knitting mills 208,863 18,074 -91%

68. Fastest Growing Jobs Going into 2030 source : Forbes magazine citing Bureau of Labor Statistics projections Statisticians Information security analysts Data scientists and mathematical science occupations, all other Logisticians Operations research analysts Actuaries Wind turbine service technicians Nurse practitioners Solar photovoltaic installers Physical therapist assistants Home health and personal care aides Medical and health services managers Physician assistants Epidemiologists Speech-language pathologists Animal trainers Computer numerically controlled tool programmers Genetic counselors Crematory operators and personal care and service workers, all other Health specialties teachers, postsecondary Forest fire inspectors and prevention specialists Interpreters and translators Athletic trainers Respiratory therapists Substance abuse, behavioral disorder, and mental health counselors Food preparation and serving related workers, all other Nursing instructors and teachers, postsecondary Woodworkers, all other Phlebotomists Software developers and software quality assurance analysts and testers

69. Material Design (Google) source : Google Material Design, “Styles” page, m3.material.io/styles/shape/overview

70. Human Interface Guidelines (Apple) source : Apple Human Interface Guidelines, “Sheets” page, developer.apple.com/design/human-interface-guidelines/components/presentation/sheets

71. Fluent (Microsoft) source : Microsoft Fluent UI, “Icons” page, developer.microsoft.com/en-us/fluentui#/styles/web/icons

72. When Did We Replace Reason with Madness? image source : Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (2001)

73. U.S. BLS Projections for Digital Designers Digital designers develop, create , and test website or interface layout , functions, and navigation for usability . design digital user interfaces or websites design and test interfaces that facilitate the human-computer interaction and maximize usability may create graphics used in websites and manage website content and links Number of Jobs, 2021 197,100 Job Outlook, 2021-31 23% (much faster than average) Number of Jobs, 2031 242,500 – not the 2 million NNg predicts! source : Occupational Outlook Handbook, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics Note that these numbers include “web developers” alongside “digital designers”, although it not clear to me how “web developers” are carved out from other developer jobs tracked by the BLS.

74. Technical Articles vs. Design Articles source : Smashing Magazine, various articles (see slide notes)

75. Something to Look At While I Take Questions At the side of the everlasting “why”, there is a “yes”, and a “yes”, and a “yes”! – Room With A View