I attended the World Usability Day Unconference facilitated by UXPA DC today at ByteCubed in Crystal City.

You could show up and volunteer to give a talk. Man, I really have been out of touch with the design community. It’s been a long time. I’ve been to UI events before, but I’ve never been to one focused on design ethics. It’s a perennial topic.

There were unconference talks, a networking break, and then a workshop facilitated by Kat Zhou.

THE KILLER APP. LITERALLY?

I shared the following with the group. Here’s the TLDR. I don’t want to kill anyone, directly or indirectly. I want to build cool, beautiful products and tools that help people make, manage, learn and build, and that leaves them feeling satisfied and accomplished when they’re done.

When I first joined a defense contractor — a small startup that was ultimately swallowed up — I was fascinated by the challenges. Interesting problems and a lot of low hanging fruit, and also mind numbing complexity. Our product was like Google Earth for the military. It was like a video game in a lot of ways. You track assets, points of interest, human intel, events, etc. Brilliant stuff.

As the product evolved, needs evolved. Data analysis was growing in importance, relatively, over awareness and planning. Who knows whom? Are there predictable patterns? Is there a correlation between people and events?

I love maps. I love the stories that data can tell.

Then it got real.

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