History lesson downloading...

I have to start with a history lesson, as my colleagues at JPMorgan were often subject to... since I've been working in the UX field before it was called UX and before I knew I was doing UX'y things. Back in the Dark Ages ;-) we were called webmasters, graphic designers, copywriters, special projects leads, digital product owners... but I can assure you though, I was none of those, specifically. But a combination of all of them instead. Now going into my fourth decade as UX practitioner, I thought it would be interesting to look back on the journey through "doing UX" with all the numerous companies, industries and people.

I started in the business of CD-ROM, before the Internet was born or at least became a viable publishing platform. Digitizing content was first successfully tackled by putting content on a disc and indexing all of it so a "search engine" could find text or images or video Images and videos needed to be labeled appropriately in order to find them. Gauging the value of a new product that offered a more efficient means of finding information was a no-brainer. Of course it was better. But a couple things emerged as not as good and that was the "discoverability" of other related content. With a search tool, you had to know exactly what you were looking for and have some prior knowledge of the subject. As a Product Owner of a monthly subscription-based set of CDs that providing information to the telecommunications industry, I directly interacted with my customers and received feedback from them on every call. I was doing UX research without really knowing I was doing it.

The owners of these publishing companies weren't necessarily all that concerned about negative feedback. After all, they were the only game in town and they had just 'added value". Feedback though, did come in the form of cancelled subscriptions. Subscribers still wanted their "print" version. If this was a companion to that, then they were game. However, one of my customers, the Bureau of National Affairs (now a Bloomberg company) saw an opportunity speed up the adoption and at the same time, lower their costs of printing and distribution. They offered the subscribers, many of whom were money strapped corporate libraries, a computer. Back then, companies had corporate libraries that centralized the subscriptions to newsletters, magazines, periodicals, etc. Thereby transferring the cost of "printing" to the customer. When I presented this to the these Corporate Librarians their eyes lit up. You're going to give me a free computer? Lesson: Technology and digital tools combined with customer experience feedback leads to innovation. Lesson: Product Owners should also do hands on user research.

To go back even further than me (if that's possible ;-) Here's a great post by Emily Stevens on Career Foundry called The Fascinating History of UX Design: A Definitive Timeline