Graphics Reference
In-Depth Information
and into the real world to shadow users and observe people using our software, it suddenly
hits them that this design stuff really matters.”
These revelations aren't confined to our random observations of consumers. Dane
Petersen of Adaptive Path, one of the world's leading user experience design studios, first
saw the possibilities back in 2004, after driving from Oregon to San Francisco for a con-
ference. “I slept in my car on the way,” Petersen recalls. “Adaptive Path was featured. I'd
heard of them, but I didn't know much about UX. This was the first place where I was in-
troduced to it. I learned that there are ways people tend to… slice up reality. We can design
software that adheres more closely to the way people think, rather than force them to ad-
here to our software, and think the way it does.”
Up until then, Petersen had worked in a development-oriented shop where UX was
barely a blip. He'd served in various roles, including that of dealing with client issues over
the phone. It was in that job that he saw the widening fault lines between designers and
users. “One thing [users] needed to know was how to center text. They would ask this again
and again. I knew [the problem was] more complicated.” Automatically, he would fall into
technical jargon or the kind of talk better left in the lab. He would speculate on definitions
of “center,” and how these might affect what users were doing. Then he realized: “They
didn't care. They just wanted to center their text.”
“Up until then, I'd seen [products and their functions] as lines of code on a screen. From
that perspective, my habit was to think of what the code could do, not what the user would
need to do... The code had been my priority… Now my priorities shifted to the user. What
did he or she need?”
Petersen grasped that, in its purest form, a UX approach would see a product entirely
in terms of its users and their priorities. When a conflict arose between the needs of the
product and the needs of the user, the user would always win.
“Rather than a single 'aha' moment, this happened over several days. [I learned] to
pull the person and the product apart in my mind, seeing the product through that person's
eyes—that was what set my mind on fire. It changed the course of my career, setting me on
a new path over the next four years.”
After returning from that San Francisco conference, Petersen founded a freelance
design company. He worked with artisans and figured out everything he could about UX
on his own. Four years later, he felt his unguided efforts reached their limit and he needed
the dedicated resources of formal courses. In 2008, he began work in a Master's Program
in Human-Computer Interaction Design at Indiana University Bloomington.
