What is UX for Good?
UX for Good is a wildly ambitious effort to design systemic solutions for some of the most vexing social challenges. Top user experience designers convene to tackle problems that matter in the only design event of its kind. Assisting the designers are leading philanthropic change makers and some of the most interesting, creative thinkers we can find.
This year we're convening leading user experience designers (UX designers) from across the U.S. to construct models to address two big problems facing the New Orleans music community: adapting its unique artistic mix to the digital economy and ensuring support for musicians who fall on hard times. Partnering with The Grammys and MusiCares, the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Foundation and the Clinton Global Initiative, the UX designers' unique skills and perspective will be applied to the greater good - making sure music remains an abundant and treasured resource in our host city.
The Latest
The World Needs UX
Jeff Leitner
There are plenty of us cobbling together big ideas to save the world and plenty more doing the hard, day-to-day work of making those ideas real. But there's a gap between insight and action, between intent and improved conditions. I believe UX - user experience design for you newcomers to the conversation - is both perfectly suited and perhaps essential to bridge that gap.
Before about 18 months ago, I hadn't heard of UX or thought much about the need for it. But now that I have, I can't imagine mapping out a complex system, constructing an intricate solution without that wonderful alchemy of anthropology, technology, design and - in my experience - absence of ego. I'm not a UX designer and have no ulterior motive for promoting the field. I've just seen first-hand, over and over, how much smarter and more effective I am when UX designers get involved. I wish that for all of us looking to do good.
Jason and I launched UX for Good to give user experience designers a seat at the table, to ensure they understand how useful they are and to raise the bar on the UX profession. In January 2011, we took our first baby steps. This May, we're looking to untangle a serious challenge that other disciplines can't and to help thousands and thousands of artists and their families.
You Are Bigger Than a Wireframe
Jason Ulaszek
I'm convinced that UX designers don't understand how much value they truly have. While we've solved countless interaction design challenges, advanced the usability and engagement of ecommerce and are working to create experiences that adapt to device and context, we have even more untapped, raw potential. Over my career, I've seen our profession completely change businesses and non-profits, by bringing clarity, by creating structure and possibility. Our unique ability to actively listen, empathize, connect the disparate and visualize holistic solutions make this happen - why not apply these super powers for good?
Jeff and I arrived at the concept for UX for Good over a beer while standing around the copier (seriously). The concept was the intersection of the work of the Insight Labs and a belief that the UX discipline could be used to tackle social challenges. Our first event last year was more than just a happy accident - it proved new value for the UX profession and invigorated the non-profits with a fresh approach. With each UX for Good event, we're evolving directly based on what we learn from our participants, partners and most importantly, supporting non-profits. When we gather in May in New Orleans, we'll continue that evolution, working with the best UX designers in the field today, a non-profit intimately familiar with the challenges musicians face and a city rich with heritage and pride. We're bound to spark new ideas and solutions using our UX talent, and yet, that doesn't shock me. I've always known UX designers to be bigger than a wireframe.
Partnering with UX for
Good
Scott Goldman of MusiCares
Music is not just important to New Orleans - it is deeply integrated into the economy, culture, and identity of the city and its people.
In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, there was no way to help New Orleans recover without understanding this. That's why MusiCares - a non-profit initiative of the GRAMMYs - established a special $1 million fund to bring relief to the musicians of the New Orleans area just days after the storm struck.
But MusiCares also understands that support is not enough. To effect sustainable change, an improved understanding of the region's musical ecology is also needed. Many musicians and music lovers long for the New Orleans that existed before 2005. But it would be impossible to go back to that time even if there had never been a hurricane - the ways that people make, enjoy, buy, share, and talk about music are simply changing too fast.
MusiCares desires to provide a safety net for musicians that will endure through all these changes. Toward that end, they've signed on as a sponsor of UX for Good in May 2012 in New Orleans. Top user-experience designers from around the world will gather there to develop a new understanding of music in the digital world. Then they'll build solutions to make the systems that sustain music more sustainable for all who benefit from them.
User-experience designers specialize in making technological systems more human, so they are eager to experiment with an experience all humans enjoy - music. MusiCares can't wait to jam with them.
