I’ve always been fascinated by the cross-pollination that can be achieved when various fields and disciplines work together. As you might have noticed from my various posts, I also like to keep an eye out for opportunities in the UI field – things happening in other fields that may not be working together in ours yet, but whose potential definitively makes them worth a second thought and an evaluation to see what properties and ideas can be applied to UI design.

Therefore, you can imagine my excitement after seeing this particular video from TED: Yves Behar demonstrates in a very engaging presentation how business requirements, resource limitations and the status-quo (read “fear of change”) tend to yield “us-too” type of designs and solutions that don’t really add any value to those companies or the customers of those companies.

I loved the phrase he presented: “…Advertising is the price companies pay for being un-original.”, which makes me wonder what other things aside from Advertising may be “prices” companies are paying for not trying to push the envelope, for not questioning “best practices”, and as he puts it, from not “designing from the inside out”.

For me, the biggest UI lesson contained in his words have to do with how we all do our best to deliver VALUE to our customers and to their users, but how many times have you brought YOUR VALUES to the table? When was the last time you, as he puts it, “fought like an animal” to make sure the VALUES that drove the project in the first place are maintained until the end, without compromises?