"UX the Long Way Round"
by Ken Beatson

Tuesday, November 5, 2013



User Experience Design (UX) is a much younger profession than its practitioners. We’ve almost all migrated here from other professional “lands”, bringing our own unique histories and perspectives. I came here from fairly nearby places; I was a database developer, web developer, designer and web project manager. Others came from slightly further away: product designers, graphic designers, librarians, marketers and many other interesting starting points. So here’s the story of my journey to UX, together with some of the things I picked up along the way.

Love at First Sight: I was instantly addicted to the web. Love at first sight. It was late 1996, about halfway through second semester, just after morning tea on a Saturday. I could still smell the “new” in the University of Tasmania’s shiny, modern North West Study Centre, which felt like a brave new world of academic prosperity brought to the declining small industrial city of Burnie, Tasmania, Australia. Tasmania, for those of you who are American, is that little triangle-shaped island at the bottom of the Australian continent. It’s not that I am picking on Americans or taking sides with those unkind people who regard you as geographically challenged. I just appreciate that you’re surrounded by a heck of a lot more of your own country than other nationalities and so it’s harder to get out as often. ...

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This blog is a companion to the UX Storytellers project. You will find everything that's currently going on, what has happened so far and what is planned for the future.

Learn through storytelling

The best way to learn is through listening to stories. The best way to teach is through telling stories. Are you a UX Expert with stories to tell? We would love to hear your story.

Famous Quotes

The universe is made of stories, not atoms.
Muriel Rukeyser

There have been great societies that did not use the wheel, but there have been no societies that did not tell stories. Ursula K. LeGuin