I came across this again the other day. I’d forgotten about it – which in its own way is one of the lessons of the video. Every time we stop to play, and allow ourselves to be creative in our thinking, we all too quickly become adults in implementing it. This is a reminder not to stop playing.

I’ve been thinking a lot about the ‘edges’ of user experience lately. Most projects demand tactical UX – a bit of research, some wireframes, perhaps a prototype, and some annotation.

It slots neatly into place in a project process.

But ‘User’ experience isn’t quite so tidy. Actual user experience is ubiquitous, pervasive. It doesn’t have neat edges or clear boundaries.

I’ve been talking a lot about pervasive UX recently. In the sense of brand, to me it encompasses all of the potential touch-points encountered by a user on journey.

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A few weeks before it launched, Tom Loosemore kindly invited me over for a preview of the Alphagov prototype. I was given a whirlwind tour of their agile process and some of the thinking behind their work. Not to mention a very dark – and thick – cup of coffee. Hey, I’m not complaining. I like it that way.

I met a few of the team (some of whom I already knew), and watched as a group of Government Communication types were taken through the same whirlwind tour – a mix of curious and skeptical faces making up the lot.

On the whole, it was a pleasant visit.

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For me UX has always been about contact with real people in the process of collaboration, workshops, design, prototyping, testing and iteration. Which is why lately I’ve been thinking about the growing reliance UX has on tools like Axure in our day-to-day work.

I’ve been around long enough to watch UX grow from an adjunct to other people’s roles to a profession of some importance in the digital space (see my post ‘Is UX Returning to being a Multidisciplinary Role’.)

As we moved from site maps and simple sketches, to complex sketching, workshops, process flows and wireframes, specifications, prototypes and user testing our profession developed a set of tools by which we could express to the world the value of our contribution. But more importantly, it enabled us to give voice to the oft-forgotten or silent users who eventually are the benefactors of our engagement with the process.

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I find myself thinking about Government’s desire to reduce costs by ‘going digital.’

It’s as though the very notion of something being online instantly results in reduced effort and cost and provides a useful and usable service to Citizens. In recent years, Government has seen digital as a means of reducing ‘avoidable contact’ – that type of contact that Government might not have to have with its Citizens face-to-face or on the telephone if it could service them digitally.

It could rationalise this by saying that digital was a progressive means of servicing a society of such diversity, breadth and distance that face-to-face was no longer an appropriate medium to provide services. Of course this begs the issue of the ten million or so UK residents who do not have access to or use of the Internet.

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I love Hack Days.

I love them because of the anticipation, the spontaneity, the community and the creativity. They generate energy – if for a short time – around the issues they are organised to expose, and for a brief moment overcome the inertia that most people come to dread within large organisations – like Government.

I say ‘expose’ because in my experience of Hack Days often people come to ‘show off’ their skills, ‘show’ the organisations or sectors whom they are targeting ‘how to do things better’, and ‘show’ each other what they are capable of.

None of which is bad. But all of which worries me slightly.

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