Milestones in Dysfunction, Part 2: The Advent of Agile

UX is in trouble.

UX has been in trouble for some years.

In 2011, I started noticing something, and I was really quiet.

Not too much anybody knew who I was in UX.

I had been doing the work for about 15 years at the time, but...

I wasn't trying to be a celebrity.

Nobody really was.

I don't recall anybody in the earlier days of UX trying to make a name for themselves.

I don't recall anybody trying to put themselves out there.

There was nobody who was trying to, quote unquote, stand out.

These were things that came along as discipline, why UX maturity started to really subside.

And as the gold rush to UX began and a lot of people were trying to come into the discipline, you started having all these dysfunctional elements.

And so I'm just taking some time to talk about each one of these different types of dysfunctional factors, the milestones, things that happen in UX as it was evolving that really started to change and to distort things.

what UX was, who we are, the value proposition.

And we can never put ourselves on a road to recovery.

We can never restore what UX is supposed to be without knowing what's out of order.

We cannot ignore what is going on.

And I gotta, before we even get into today's topic, I find it really interesting, downright laughable, How a lot of people in 2011, I started saying, hey, UX is under siege.

My exact phrase, my exact terminology.

People laughed at me.

People told me to be quiet.

And that's being nice.

They told me to shut up.

They told me I was crazy for talking about it.

Fast forward to 2026.