Interview with UX Expert Luke Wroblewski

Luke Wroblewski will be sharing some awesome and practical advice at our upcoming event, coincidentally titled 31 Awesomely Practical UX Tips.

This week we pick Luke’s brain about how he stays ahead of the UX trends. Here’s what he had to say:

Rosenfeld Media: You seem to be ahead of the rest of us when it comes to figuring out what’s going to be important in the field. Your books, like Web Form Design, are great examples of that. What’s your secret? How do you figure it out?

Luke Wroblewski: Being late to things. In all seriousness, I don’t think the trick is being early. Its being there at the right time. For example, it was no secret that mobile was going to be huge. In fact, for many years it was projected to be the “next big thing in 3 to 5 years,” like many other technologies or trends we talk about today. But if you got there too early you were alone.

I’m usually not the first one to uncover new things, but I think I’ve been lucky with getting there at a time when lots of other people were also trying to figure stuff out—when there’s lots of questions that need answering. I love to learn and explore new things so I feel good in that kind of environment. I also tend to get a handle on things by writing them out in order to understand them. So I do that a lot and share what I learn.

As a result, I uncover things that are of interest to people wrestling with the same questions. As the number of people encountering these questions increases, so does interest in the topic. And maybe that’s why it feels like I’m “ahead.” I certainly don’t feel that way on most days!

RM: What do you think the next “big thing” will be in the UX field?

LW: I hear lots of people wrestling with delivering great experiences to a wide range of devices: laptops, desktops, tablets, phones, and everything in between. All these things are connected to the network so if you are making digital applications or publishing digital information—they’re your problem. And there are lots of interesting, unanswered questions when it comes to designing and developing for this multi-device Web.

But it seems like this is just the start. TVs, watches, glasses, cars, wearables, and much more just extend this problem. Once you have more than one of these devices, questions about how they can work together become really important as well. These are the areas I’m most interested in these days. No guarantees that they’ll be the next “big thing” but there is a lot of uncertainty out there about how to tackle these problems. Which, to me, is really exciting.

RM: Thanks, Luke!

There’s still time to sign up for 31 Awesomely Practical UX Tips! Join Luke along with five other experts for this awesome virtual event on May 29th.