AlexAitken.net

For the second year run­ning I’ve spent four late sum­mer days at Ad­apt­ive Path’s UX Week in San Fran­cisco. The 2009 edi­tion saw me di­li­gently post­ing day-by-day notes and ac­counts. This year I simply re­lay quotes and sources while steer­ing clear of at­tri­bu­tion. The con­fer­ence was again killer, the per­spect­ives at the same time re­fresh­ing and af­firm­ing, the chal­lenges plenty and in­creas­ing, the in­spir­a­tion ubi­quit­ous and palp­able. Thank you Mer­holz and co. for an­oth­er un­qual­i­fied suc­cess.

UX Week 2009

Theme

In welcoming us to Day 2 of the conference, Adaptive Path President Peter Merholz promised us we wouldn’t see any product or UI pictures as the goal was to move from technology tools and methods to reflection on the human experience. Day 2′s theme was ‘Expression.’

Keynote Recap
Sarah Jones

Tony Award® winning playwright and performer Sarah Jones brought life and meaning to the concept of personae. Those who weren’t familiar with her work (myself included) were greeted, in the first moments of her presentation, by a very proper English-accented woman whom we assumed would present to us for the next 40 minutes. What we in fact witnessed was a consuming character study that reminded us in a jolting way of the people for whom we work.