#ixda

IxDA Pittsburgh just held its annual social gathering, UX Mex, in the cabana at Esquina Cantina. There were nine people in attendance. Five of us are unemployed. One attendee had just been laid off Thursday. Another has made it to the final interview round thirteen times, only to be second choice. Yet another informed us that the entire Google UX team in Pittsburgh had been let go—luckily, he already found work with the consulting firm he hired while there. Someone related a rumor that Duolingo won’t consider anyone with UX in their title, because “UX is perceived as unpopular right now.” There was a litany of local companies that used to have strong design teams and now have nobody. I felt bad for the CMU grad that showed up, listening to all of us complaining about the job market that he’s bet his masters degree on.

I believe good design is as important now as it has ever been. In fact, we’re reaching a point where implementation is no longer going to be the long pole in the tent. When you can build anything quicker than ever before (as can everyone else) knowing what you should build is of prime concern. That’s where design shines.

We’ll see how long it takes companies to realize that again. Until then, say a prayer for everyone that industry has cast aside.

In the evening of December 20th, 2005, a very small group of Interaction Designers met at Caribou Coffee in the Southside Works. That meetup was the first of many, and the group quickly formalized as IxDA Pittsburgh. That makes this year, 2025, the twentieth anniversary of our organization.

I wasn’t sure we were going to make it. Since the pandemic, I’ve had a harder time getting new volunteers, so my planning committee was dwindling. Fortunately, I had an uptick after publishing an announcement about our anniversary, and we have a number of events in the works.

Coming up next, we’re featuring Brad Frost, author of Atomic Design, and his brother Ian Frost. They’ll be talking about design tokens. Check it out, if you’re in the area.

We got our first snow of the season this evening. It was snowing as I was driving into Pittsburgh to teach my class, but stopped by the time I got there. As I finished my lecture, a couple of my students pointed out that it had started snowing. They seemed pretty excited. “This is our first snow,” they told me. I cracked a big grin. I love snow, but there’s nothing better than witnessing someone else experience it for the first time.

It took me back to my sophomore year of high school. My marching band had been invited to march in the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade. We spent much of the day before walking around Manhattan. I went to the top of one of the twin towers. I saw Rockefeller Center.

We had to be lined up at 5:00 in the morning. And wouldn’t you know, for the first time in something like twenty years, it snowed the morning of the parade. There was a good five inches on the ground. And it was cold. We had winter uniforms, but we weren’t wearing those. I remember standing on top of the grates where the warm air would occasionally blow up from the subway. We stood there watching our band director chat up Miss America. He claims he went on a date with her after the parade. I’m a drummer, so I didn’t wear gloves. By the time we started the parade, I couldn’t feel my fingers.

I also remember that there was a band there from Hawaii. Rather than fly in to New York, they had bussed all the way across the country, performing places as they went. More than one of their busses had broken down, and so only part of their band had made it. The rest were strewn out across the U.S. Those who were there were extremely excited. It was the first time they had seen snow. I’ll never forget that.

And then there was the year that IxDA’s Interaction conference was held in Seattle: 2019. I understand that Seattle doesn’t actually get much snow. On Wednesday, we started hearing about a big snowstorm that was expected to hit on Friday. That afternoon, I received a notification that might flight home Saturday morning had been canceled just due to the expectation of snow. That was a problem, because my church was going to be celebrating the tenth anniversary of our contemporary service, and there was no way I was going to miss that. My band was counting on me to be there. Alaska Air told me they could get me on a flight Tuesday. Screw that. I booked a flight out of Portland Saturday morning and then reserved a rental car from a place just around the corner from my hotel.

Sure enough, it started snowing Friday. Seattle doesn’t know how to deal with snow, so it just shut down. We were supposed to have our closing party in the Seattle Museum of Pop Culture, but they canceled on us. There we all were, wrapping up the Interaction Awards at the Fisher Pavilion with the snow coming down outside. Kiat Lim, our Regional Coordinator from Korea, was there with his wife taking pictures with a look of awe on his face. He explained that it was the first time they had seen snow. I so enjoyed watching them go outside and play in it.

I was up at the crack of dawn the next morning, dragging my suitcase through maybe three inches of snow to stand at the door of the car rental waiting for them to open. The roads were a little dicey in places, but there was hardly anyone else on them, and I know how to drive in the snow. I made it to Portland, caught my flight, and was in church the next morning.

Yesterday was my 50th birthday. That means DesignAday just hit 17. I've had another year of significant events, the most prominent being my eldest daughter’s wedding. I also received a promotion to senior manager, recorded three more original songs with my band, attended the 50th anniversary of my undergraduate design program, and started finishing my basement.

It wasn't all roses and lollipops. The cancellation of Interaction 24 and the financial failures of IxDA have been depressing, and I may well have taught my last class at WVU, breaking my string of 36 consecutive semesters.

Hitting 50 isn't going to slow me down, though. I have an album to release, more songs to record, a book to write, and a new class to teach. You can bet I'll be writing about it all here. I hope you'll continue following along.

Since mid-December, I've been loosely involved in efforts to understand and deal with the current financial situation of my dearly beloved non-profit, professional organization: the Interaction Design Association (IxDA). You may recall hearing that the Interaction 24 conference, which was supposed to be held in Sydney the last week of February, was canceled. For many years now, that conference has been the primary source of funding for the organization. The Pandemic disrupted our business model, and the 2023 conference was not able to restore it.

Some amazing volunteers are working very hard right now to fully understand the situation and come up with solutions to mitigate the problems we are facing.

Last Thursday, IxDA Pittsburgh held its tenth IxDebate. He had 47 people in attendance, the best turnout we've had since 2019. The very last topic was this:

IxDA has become irrelevant as a professional organization. It should grow to serve more professional needs (like certification) or transform in some way (like merge with IDF or partner with ACM SIGCHI).

Given the recent cancellation of Interaction 24 and the departure of the organization's executive director, as well as the reduced number of events IxDA Pittsburgh hosted this year, I was interested to hear what people had to say. As it turned out, people generally felt that there is still a need for our organization and that it provides something that other groups don't. Someone said that IxDA Pittsburgh played an important role in their professional development. Someone else said that they learned more at the this event than they typically do with online courses. Another person pointed to the attendance that night as proof that IxDA Pittsburgh is still a valuable entity.

That made me feel pretty good. Tonight, we held our holiday happy hour, and one attendee explained that he had been a graphic designer, and then he signed up for the mentorship program we ran back in 2019. As a result of that experience, he was able to shift his career into UX (hat tip to his mentor, Tim Broadwater). One of my planning team members thanked me for keeping IxDA Pittsburgh going for so many years. She explained that she started attending our events before she was a designer, and that if it weren't for us, she may never have become one.

Product Managers shoulder the responsibility for their product’s success, as well as the brunt of the blame for product failures. It’s no wonder they often cling tightly to the reins when it comes to product vision, customer engagements, and decisions regarding features and functionality. User Experience Designers have a toolbox of methods that, when employed properly, can reduce risk and ensure that the product being built will meet customer needs. However, they often feel devalued or blocked by overprotective PMs. There is a lot of overlap in the perceived areas of ownership and responsibility between PMs and UX, but this doesn’t have to result in competition. PMs and UX should be close collaborators. Let’s clear the air and figure out how to best work together.

In 2015, I chaired MWUX, bringing it to Pittsburgh, and assembled an outstanding team to organize and run the conference. It was important to me to include something in the conference that would give back to the city that was hosting it. I took the idea for some kind of social change workshop to Marc Rettig, and he then introduced me to his partner at Fit Associates, Hanna du Plessis. The two of them designed and ran a free workshop that was open to anyone—not just conference attendees. In the intervening years, I’ve worked with Hanna on IxDA Pittsburgh events and seen her at a conference or two. I included her in one of my posts about women rocking design in Pittsburgh. Yesterday, I learned that Hanna has ALS.