Summary: What can UX professionals learn from Marketing’s mistakes?

Between the 1950s and 1990s, Marketing worked hard to position itself as the missing link between companies and customers.
Today, far from that position, it tends to be one of the least respected disciplines in business, both by companies and customers.

• How did this happen?
• What marketing promises is UX now repeating, risking our credibility?
• Are we making the same mistakes? (hint: yes)
• How can we avoid falling into the same traps?

The promise: Marketing’s golden days

A brief summary of Marketing’s early successes, its promises, how it changed the way business was understood, and how it earned a seat at the table. Case study: Louis Cheskin and the application of the scientific method.

The disappointment: Marketing’s fall from grace

The sins that led Marketing to fail as a discipline: Arrogance, Complacency, and Superstition (Cargo Culting).

Reflecting on UX

A parallel between Marketing’s ups and downs and our current situation. How, by ignoring Marketing’s history, we are doomed to repeat it – and how we are already falling into the same traps.

Taking the wheel

It’s not too late. We can still envision the path forward, anticipate risks of derailment, make decisions, and take action as professionals and as a community.

• Identify mistakes that have already begun (that must be stopped) and anticipate new mistakes (that must be prevented).
• Recognize the good actions already in progress (that must be supported) and project the good actions not yet initiated (that we must start).
• Engage as professionals and as a community with the future of our practice.

About the author

Santiago Bustelo is the Director of User Experience at Kambrica, a UX consultancy based in Buenos Aires. He chairs the local chapter of the Interaction Design Association (IxDA BA) and was the first Regional Coordinator of IxDA for Latin America.

Santiago began his career as an interaction designer in 1996, designing business simulators for management training. At that time, Total Quality Management was in vogue. It didn’t live up to its promises. Today, we are repeating the same cycle with Lean and Agile.

The entry Professional UX practice: What can we learn from Marketing’s mistakes? was first published on Kambrica.