Redesign Must Die

As a term almost devoid of meaning, “redesign” is a crutch that leads to disastrous results. Redesigns originate in the hazy concerns and political machinations of senior leaders, coalesce around poorly defined problem statements, gain steam around hopes of “fixing everything once and for all,” and conclude with Pyrrhic celebrations of what are ultimately a sad bag of cosmetic changes. Along the way, agencies get fat and rich, in-house teams get crushed, and users suffer. And because redesign efforts yield so little institutional learning, the whole sad mess gets repeated every few years In his UX London keynote, Lou Rosenfeld will argue instead for the rational and cost-effective alternative of incremental change: tuning sites over time, rather than “fixing” them all at once. Over and over again.

About The Speaker

Louis Rosenfeld is an independent information architecture consultant and the founder of Rosenfeld Media, a user experience publishing house. He has been instrumental in helping establish the field of information architecture, and in articulating the role and value of librarianship within the field.

Lou has helped such organisations as PayPal, AT&T, Caterpillar, Ford, Microsoft and the Centers for Disease Control make their information easier to find. He is co-author of Information Architecture for the World Wide Web, considered the bible of the field, and has been a regular contributor to Web Review, Internet World, and CIO magazines.

Lou is co-founder of the Information Architecture Institute and helped found the Information Architecture Summit. He blogs regularly at www.louisrosenfeld.com, and tweets even more regularly @louisrosenfeld.