Last night I was at a small dinner party & the hostess (whom I’d met a couple times before) turns to me over the artisanal cheese and crackers and says, So Jim, I never asked you. What do you do for a living? Expecting the usual blank stare, I answered – I’m a user experience architect. And she lit up with a big smile – I know exactly what that is!
Turns out, in the 90s she ran an events programming company for web start ups. Became friends with budding gurus, several of whom joined together to create – you guessed it – Adaptive Path. In fact, she’d just interviewed for a job in HR with them. Does that mean you’d be hiring? I asked. She said, Yes… if she took the job. But it doesn’t look like she will. (Right now she travels all over the second world promoting an educational NGO.)
So I shared the Duff & Puff anecdote & she was delighted. Which led us to a series of anecdotes about misunderstood verbal cues. Which I’ll spare you.
