Saturday, 4:00pm, Grand Salon A
A big man, over six feet tall and weighing more than 300 pounds, strides into the leatherbound boardroom of a major soap company. He is the company’s CEO. He is introduced to the advertising execs at the other end of the room, but says nothing. Instead, after they all sit down, he tilts his head back, clears his throat loudly, and launches an enormous gob of spit that splatters on the middle of the huge table.
“You’ve just seen me do a disgusting thing,” he says. “And you’ll always remember what I just did.”
It’s a scene from a 1947 Clark Gable movie called “The Hucksters” and it graphically shows the power of being culturally inappropriate in order to be functionally appropriate.
Being inappropriate is a scary and powerful tool that user experience professionals should use more often. Because we’re in a new field in a slightly less-new industry that services many very old markets, we have neither the time nor the patience for business as usual. Business as usual won’t expand our horizons.
Instead of spitting on boardroom tables, UX professionals are taking advantage of humor and non-traditional forms of communication to break free of the constraints of culture appropriateness. This session will explore ways of intentionally and skillfully exceeding historically respected boundaries. We’ll focus on three primary techniques:
- Creating culturally inappropriate presentations
- Running culturally inappropriate meetings
- Delivering culturally inappropriate documentation
We’ll discuss the many benefits as well as the quite serious risks of being culturally inappropriate.
The speaker will draw on more than two decades of his own design and IA experience and include the many inappropriate successes of other user experience professionals.
INSTRUCTOR
Dan Willis
Dan Willis has been professionally inappropriate for more than 20 years, starting with dead-tree design and illustration before moving into UX work and management after the birth of the commercial Web. He has presented at several IA Summits and is responsible for UX Crank (www.uxcrank.com), a tool for UX professionals. He is currently a consultant for Sapient.