Marketing and UX -- mutually exclusive?

I've been reading a lot of articles for school about how user experience fits in a company hierarchy. All of them make a clear distinction between marketing and user experience. They say that the marketing objectives (selling) are different than the user experience/design objectives (making things usable*).

As someone who worked in marketing, I don't fully understand why these entities have to be so separate. Why can't marketing people use UX concepts to gather their information, too?

I always think of my experience at the startup. We were frantically planning for an event (as usual in reactionary startup-ville), and the marketing people threw together this new campaign called The Republic. It was geared towards teenage skateboarders, in an attempt to create a street team or affiliate program. It had that whole revolutionary, we-take-the-world-by-storm-via-helmet-cameras vibe. It also required people to wear bandannas. I remember thinking "hmm, this is a weird idea." Right before launch, someone realized that this was actually not the product demographic at all. In fact, the users were 25-40 year old action sports enthusiasts. Perhaps if we had incorporated some user requirements gathering techniques (such as interviews, surveys, focus groups, etc), we would have been able to produce a more fitting marketing campaign. This isn't to say that companies don't use user requirements techniques in marketing, but it's definitely not common practice in smaller organizations.

The articles always talk about how the design team gets requirements from marketing but not vice versa. To create a truly successful product, I think this information flow should go both ways.

Look at the new Windows 7 campaign - Windows 7 was my idea. They are leveraging their UX practices to sell things. I don't know why this isn't done more frequently. After all, people like technology that works. Plus, if user experience practices didn't help companies sell more things, companies wouldn't use them. So why such a strong distinction?

Maybe it's just a case of academics over-analyzing these concepts and trying to create clear distinctions between similar fields. I don't think it's so clear-cut in reality.


*Not to be confused with user-friendly.

New Pens

This weekend, it was 60 degrees and sunny, and I don't think there is any type of weather more inspiring for drawing. I got 6 new pens ranging between .8 and .05, oh and one brush pen. My skills are a little rusty, but I'm hopeful that they will come back quickly.





I tend to just draw random lines and then make creatures out of them. I feel like I've had a mental/creative block lately. I can't seem to write coherent sentences, and I feel like I am functioning in an endless loop. Perhaps this is just an end-of-the-quarter slump. I am trying to get it together.

I am also contemplating a triathlon comeback. I think I did better at bike racing (or at least had more fun) when I didn't take it so seriously, and when I incorporate swimming and running, my body is more balanced. I also have some unfinished business, such as that 2:15 olympic distance goal that has eluded me. I was right there, but things never came together, and I didn't get a chance to perform when I was at my peak fitness. Gotta take it slow, though. I'm not sure if I want to be that serious again. I still want to race bikes, but the thought of crashing on my hip this year sounds really unappealing. I may wait until next year.

This is still a ways away, obviously. I swam a few times last week without any issue. Then on Saturday I got dragged on a bike ride around Magnolia. This was hillier than I remembered, and longer, so of course it flared up my hip. I knew it was a bad idea, so it's not too surprising. Riding a bike is weird because my body still thinks it's fast, and I felt fine during the ride, but it always takes a day for the hip pain to respond. I just need to rest a few days and then I will start swimming again.

Back to PC!

Ok, so perhaps my last post was a bit of an exaggeration. My classes are relevant for UX applications, and I don't even want to be a technical writer anyway. Still, I do feel like I need to work hard outside of class in order to get a decent job. And I haven't lost all hope on bike racing.

Oh, I have a big announcement! After using a mac for about 3 years, I have switched back to PC. My shiny new Dell XPS arrived a few days ago, and I am quite happy with the switch.

Why did I switch back? A few reasons:
1. The "wizard behind the curtain" aspects of mac. When something goes wrong or the computer starts slowing down, I feel helpless. Generally because I am. At least on a PC, I can clean out spywear or defragment, and it usually helps.

2. Document organization. I don't like how mac just dumps stuff wherever it sees fit. Like when you put a file into a folder, it drops the file wherever you let go of it, not nicely in line with the other files.

3. Excel and Word. I hate, hate, hate the mac versions of these programs. Actually, I dislike pretty much all mac programs. I like my programs contained. I do not like the toolbars and components of the program floating around in free space on my desktop. I also do not like when the document gets stuck under the toolbar and you can't get it out.

4. Form over function. Clearly, macs are mostly about image. They look sleak, but I went through 3 batteries and 2 heat sinks on my macbook. That cool, sleak design does not allow for adequate cooling.

5. Price. I got a 64 bit XPS for much less than a macbook pro would cost.

Downsides:
1. Helvetica, but there are ways around this.

That's really all I can think of.

Our hero tirelessly presses onward until she stops for a minute and thinks "why am I doing this?"

I have reached the "Why am I doing this?" moment of grad school. This is for a few reasons.

First, my program is highly theoretical and conceptual, and this conflicts with my rational, job-oriented mind. I know that I need skills in order to find a job in this profession (by this profession, I mean HCI, UX, technical writing, etc). But since the program is so theoretical and broad, I haven't been learning any of the technical skills in class. Thus, I've taken it upon myself to learn these skills outside of class, on top of all the coursework.

I also spent a few days this week doing some really hard "writing exercises" for some undisclosed, California-based tech giant. It's worth reiterating that these exercises were really hard, and they required me to learn about things like the DOM, REST, SOAP, and more scary acronyms that require research just to understand the research. Now, I like to think of myself as pretty tech savvy. I know some C++, and I can code HTML/CSS websites by hand. I know Flash, Photoshop, Final Cut Pro, Motion, etc, etc, etc. But, this test opened up a whole new world of things I have to learn. Really, it never ends.

After 48 hours of tirelessly working on the aforementioned exercises, I returned to normal life where I completed projects for my classes. It's pretty impossible to overlook the discrepancy here. The projects in class are just not nearly technical enough to help my technical writing. And they don't emphasize the code and design techniques to enable me to learn about UX design or research.

In addition to all of this, I built my portfolio website, and through that experience, I discovered that I need a lot more stuff for it. Will my future classes provide me with the opportunities to create useful portfolio pieces? Or should I do them on my own?

The interesting part is that it seems like other people in my classes don't share the same sense of urgency that I do. I think that some people are using the program as a crutch to wait out the bad economy. I hear things about how there are no jobs out there, so people are switching to the PhD program so they can stay in school longer. Then there are others, such as myself, who are using the program as a stepping stone, or even a launch pad, to something much, much greater. I, for one, am trying to get out as fast as I can so that I can start doing things.

But perhaps this is what separates me from the majority of the world. I am striving towards something greater than myself, greater than anything I've previously done, and I am not stopping for anything, especially a bad economy. From my perspective, if there are no jobs out there (which there are, you just have to work to get 'em), I will just make one for myself.

So here I am. The motivated, rational part of me wants to start doing things, and sometimes it feels like grad school is a waste of time. I know, though, that it's necessary and it's enabling me to do these things. I just don't want to get stuck in the grad student mentality where I stay in school and over-analyze things and lose sight of reality.

Lastly, I am juggling three separate lives - the grad school life, the marketing work life, and the bike racer life. Obviously juggling all these separate, secret lives is not sustainable, and the daily transition between unrelated work life and school life is really unpleasant. And each day, I continue to let go of the bike racer life, partly because my hip still hurts a lot and partly because I am thoroughly losing interest.