The iPhone frequently breaks several UI guidelines (although the field is still nascent, I acknowledge the guidelines themselves are up for debate, but that’s for another forum) such as consistency, lack of affordances, etc. and is really no more usable than many smartphones on the market (cited in Fred Beecher’s article, “The iPhone is not easy to use. . . “). However, when speaking with UX practitioners or anyone who owns an iPhone, they will say that it is “user friendly”. What do they mean by this?

In our age, where fMRI scans are not yet a feasible means of discovering what is really going on in the brains of individuals when interacting with a product, we instead have to listen to what people say, watch what they do and acknowledge that neither are sufficient to predicting which products will be successful and which will not (although, at times very helpful). This is where I believe triangulation comes in.

Usability, in itself, does not seem like a commodity. However, I would say that an exceptional user experience, is, of which usability is an integral part of. It is user experience that combines usable functionality with interaction design and aesthetic appeal. All three combined are what creates a product that anyone on the street will call, “user-friendly”.

Many designers and developers are looking to create the “next iPhone”. This striving for exceptional design is a commodity which includes usability. In my opinion, it is UX, IxD combined that makes all that happen.

—————-

First, I see many comments dispute the definition of “commodity” used in Kem’s article. I don’t care about the word use, but more about the points, which I find interesting. To start, this is a great talk on design thinking and thinking big from TED that relates to Kem’s hypothesis: Tim Brown, Think Big. I’d suggest watching that first.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UAinLaT42xY

To paraphrase a great point from the talk, the fact that design has become about consumer products and a tool for consumerism, has made us think small. To a degree, we are at a point of aesthetics. As Nurit mentions in his/her comment in the above article, it’s easier for people to understand what we do from that angle. The problem is when we fall back and explain ourselves with something of such face value, we deteriorate the value we actually add. We explain it to people as aesthetics, and then become a product of our own explanation.

The fact that we’ve been reduced as a field to consumerism and aesthetics makes us think small and become commoditized. In addition to that, when design started becoming a standard company title, we were introduced to organization with a role that is seemingly subjective. This has caused us to start at the bottom since “everyone” can do what we do. With this role, we’ve been reduced to using design thinking to ask “should the icon be left or right aligned”. We should be careful our position doesn’t become our prophecy.

-Usability as Commodity-
Usability as used by many companies is broken regardless of whether we say it’s a “commodity”. Like Design, it has to overcome the stigma of what is does, why it matters, and how it’s properly used. People often use it to tell them what users want, but users [say they] want the familiar and safe. Users will also want everything AND the kitchen sink until it’s given to them. They will express the ability to have control over everything, but it’s not how they act. Telling the difference is key… and one of the most important things. Poor usability and reach is a commodity. Good ones are hard to come by. This is why you hire great designers to compliment research, to help extrapolate what people need, want, and desire. Both working in tandem is what can produce great products. The field isn’t a commodity as much as it’s misunderstood and misused.

-We are *very rare-
We are rare… at least good designers and researchers are rare. Poor practitioners are common. Just think of any “crowdsourcing” site like http://99designs.com/. Anyone *can do usability. Anyone *can do design. They simply may suck at it. Same way anyone can make clothes… even me, but you wouldn’t want to wear them. The challenge is to show why one approach is better. This ties back to the point above. If we continually refer and explain ourselves as proprietors of aesthetics, I worry we will continue this trend of “anyone can cook”. We need to do what any good design does, differentiate.

Dave Malouf in comments mentioned the concerns of Asia coming into the design market [as they are in tech] with lower salaries, and the potential to hurt or saturate our field. However their education system isn’t bred to produce creative designers as a whole. It still sticks to a very regimented system of learning that doesn’t embrace creativity. Someone can correct me on this, but it’s what I’ve seen with schools in Korea, China, and Japan. I’m not concerned about that from a great design perspective, but from a cheap commodity that people who don’t understand the differences, it is somewhat concerning. It continues to perpetuate the incorrect information about our field.
…but I don’t deal with those people anyway 

I do have to justify my presence and job to many people, but we’re in a fairly new field. A field that isn’t taught in many schools, and a field that relies on a side of the brain that is pushed out of most modern education systems. We are very fast to say no one understands us, but it’s not like our discipline has been around for long in the public eye. In the 1960’s I’m sure being a computer programmer was just as odd and confusing.

-From Commodity to Leaders-
The problem isn’t that we’ve become a commodity, although it will be if we accept the hand we’ve been dealt. That will keep us thinking small. This is just the beginning. We’re the people who are slowly crafting our jobs, our roles, our titles. My only ask is we think bigger and broader. Let’s change things, let’s create what’s not there and give a voice to the invisible commodities services that are our skills. Let’s change school systems and how people think. Let’s give a voice to the good and bad. It will become clearer, but it will take time, and it will take us explaining what we do, even if people don’t get it at first. For each great designer there are a 100 people making terrible logos calling it branding for fifty dollars. Put in the extra hours to make your point. Put in the weekend time to figure what you can do to help people change.

It’s just us, I don’t see anyone running to our rescue.

My take is: I am glad that “the industry” has decided to point out the obvious. That the term User Experience was the flavor of the month, following the history and evolution of design that butts up against consumerism.

I have no idea who John Holland is, I have a coworker that is young and without kids that feeds me all the stuff I am supposed to be looking at.

John, your “article”/post sucks. Why? How about some historical precedent? I challenge you to pick up any of Henry
Petroski’s books. I really wish you would revisit what you have written here, with the insight of what is in a book like “The Evolution of Useful Things”. Let;s start a dialog from a perspective that is longer than a couple years.

I do like that you mentioned the term Human Factors but I competley disagree with immediately associating it with pop culture design phenomena called “UX”.

I recently saw brilliant presentations by Human Factors educators at NC State who had the balls, yes HUGE balls, to come before an audience and talk about how the utterly failed after a year of hard, 80 hour a week work, to revolutionize and improve the drudgery of performing Mammograms in the Duke Health System down here in Raleigh. Sometimes, it seems, humans actually like things to be broken, just like oursleves.

I saw another HF presentation on an attempt to reduce injuries in the worst industry in the world, that is, maid service at hotels. Through studying their work, conducting exhaustive biomechanical research and testing, they cam up with multiple solutions that were brilliant. Everything from cleaning tubs, to putting pillows into slipcovers. Then they had insight, this doesnt look like something I would want to buy. They immediately turned to the Design department at NC State, a first, to get the solutions and form factors to work within a presentation that would be appealing.

As a designer/artist, I would never pretend to assume that because I work with a team wrapped in the term “UX”, that I would have even a small understanding of the neuromuscular framework of the human body that my PHD Human Factors coworker does. But, I do have a real talent for communicating what she knows into a product that has a business model that is less than humanistic behind it.

User Experience is simply a “semantic meme” for the business and trade of what we call “design” in today’s global infrastructure.

So while people will anxiously await the new term they are supposed to use to ensure 100k+ salaries at the multi-nationals, I will be down here in the trenches ignoring all monikers and doing the hard work around what all of this really is. And that is…

I’m eager to read the author’s thoughts re the “next traveler in design evolution” especially if it works to make UX a differentiated value-added service instead of a commodity.

As an Ixd person I remember the times when I had time to think of a solution and come up with multiple concepts that gave me time to think about what I was doing. The whole thinking process as I design is almost gone and it is so mechanical. now all production. Yes I am sometimes getting ‘melancholic’ because I see my work on a production line. Again commodity. Other Ixd people I know work in stencils reproducing the visual brand of the same thing over and over again. It is repetitive and mechanical and they do not feel like creators of anything but instead producers of designs.

Two of the elements of Ux, ‘Usability’ and ‘Design’ are being reduced to production. how do we stop this mechanical pace of production of visual designs to supply high demand? The writer hits it on the head!

I don’t think you can ever ship the design part of what we do but I take your point that the ‘overwhelming manufacturing mindset’ is hard to overcome. It is a place where intellectual design property is violated with no recourse. Knock-off come near to the real thing. Design is copied and reproduced.

Yes it is hard to reproduce the feeling experience that someone may have with a real Prada bag or iPHONE or whatever else but the production side of Design as a commodity is evident.

it is exactly that point that I make. And further, design (forget user experience; does this term mean anything any more?) has elements that are definitely commodities. Walk into a IDSA event and you will hear a lot of worries about China & Korea & low salaries. But holistic design innovation that traditional UX supports ain’t close to being a commodity. Looking at Asia, this type of thinking is very difficult cultural to pass on, due to the overwhelming manufacturing mindset. Even in Japan, “experience” is not really an understood design element like it is in Europe and the US. So the critical mass required to make this really a commodity hasn’t happened yet. It will. ;-), just not yet.