at a conference this week, and of course I got in touch with Aaron while here. We met at the Apple store for an event called Designing the Mobile User Experience. The design team giving the presentation clearly had a great deal of experience in the field – but if anything, they had TOO much experience.

The problem with mobile user experiences is an issue that design can address, certainly, but to suggest that the problem of low mobile adoption is related to design completely ignores the fact that the carriers nickel-and-dime business plans are the real barrier to adoption and wide usage, and their needs will always trump any designers’ efforts to improve things.

For a fine artist to not acknowledge all of their challenges is forgivable – it’s not part of the job description. But for an applied artist to engage in an hour long presentation pretending that ANY design intervention or research could ever trump the client’s pre-defined need is pretty much dishonest.