UX Australia 2014

As the more observant citizens of the internet have noticed, it is a very different place than it was ten years ago. Recently our workplace have been reflecting on how things have changed during the ten years we have been in business, specifically in the UX space. What was once a field with a heavy focus on IA and ROI, our industry has diversified into a great many avenues.

Looking back often helps us to know how to move forward, and in a field that has grown as quickly as UX, it’s hard to keep track of all of the things which have happened in the last decade. We want to share our take on the journey we’ve witnessed this craft take since the last episode of ‘Frasier’ aired on TV. We’ve seen user experience make itself intrinsic to most large scale redesigns, we’ve seen the rise in responsive design, the renaissance of research, the entrance of social media and all of the strategies which go with it, and many new tools & methodologies which facilitate rapid prototyping. And did we mention a little thing called the iPhone?

Through the lens of our local industry conferences we will look back over the past 10 years and highlight some of the trends that we’ve seen come and go with an analytical and heuristic review of what has come before. We’ll do some number crunching, some word clouding, some way-back-machining, and some “I-remember-when”ing to provide a year-by-year view of key themes in our industry and the sometimes strange relationships that seem to exist between them.