My own frustrations with products/services not being simple to use. It's what keeps me going too - there are so many things in the world that you can't just pick up and use. As a user it annoys me when I have to waste time reading instruction manuals that are usually difficult to figure out in themselves. And there are so many websites where you can't do simple tasks.

It's my aim to make the world a better place by making people's lives a little easier.

I was the "accidental" UX designer, after several "why don't we put X here, easier to accomplish 1 2 3, why this why that, it would be easier if..." management decided to sign me up for it, got hooked, and it feels good to be honest making other's lives easier! (online that is)

I'm a psychology major who wanted to create the "perfectly ergonomic" workspace. I started tweaking open source software since I was a minor. I realized that I'm going to be in this field for a while.

• I like to put things into an order.
• I studied design.
• I like it when things are thought through and work well.
• I saw that I had more fun and jox good making UIs then making things attractive for the eye.
• I like to analyze and design human behaviour

For the chicks.

I can tell you exactly when it happened for me; senior year of college, all CE's at MSOE are required to take Human Factors. I sat there watching how my fellow students didn't pay attention in the slightest and wondered how they thought that was okay. We build systems for users, so they should be usable. I also wondered how it was possible that this course was only required for Computer Engineering students, but none of the other disciplines, but that's another story.

I actually paid attention in that class and learned a lot. I took this knowledge back to my job and used it to form a usability subteam within engineering and the business units. From that point on, I have continued to make usability a prime factor in all projects that I work on.

To make the world an easier, less frustrating place to be. A place where interaction facilitates behaviour rather than hampering it.

Personally I've been online since the BBSes of the early 80s (300/300 baud anyone?!) and into the "birth" of the commercial Internet in the early and mid 90s. I was working for ISPs just before the dotcom boom of '99 and helped put in Internet infrastructure that we take for granted today. I was working for venture capitalists during the boom and watched countless brilliant ideas backed with big money and very clueful management teams fail because the infrastructure wasn't mature enough and neither were users/consumers. It became clear to me, and everyone else, that the new paradigm was good interaction design - i.e. now that we've built the infrastructure, how are we going to use it? That's what brought me to UX.

There's a current Volvo ad here in the UK. The strapline is something like "there's more to life than driving a Volvo, that's why you own one". I feel the same regarding interaction (from a user centric view): there's more to life than dealing with sloppy interactions, that's why you're in UX" :)

The strong belief that user-centred design brings real, tangible value to organisations.

I really like to analyze the human behavior and do something good about it. Been a psychologist seems too wild, so creating better UIs feels like a better way to do it :P.

I'm a Web Developer, and when I first started making web sites/applications, I kind of felt that there's a difference between what I make and what big companies (like google) makes (my work was much less pleasant to use). So over time I stumbled upon the book "Defensive Design for the Web", which later led me to "Don't make me think" that introduced me to the field.

Afterwards, my friend knew that I read that book, and asked me to do a paid expert review for his web application. I did pretty good in that report, and I had so much fun spotting the issues and writing about them, which made me think that maybe I should be doing it for a living. And that was the best decisions I've ever did, since I've found out that the more I learn about the UX field, the more I fall in love with it.

Story of my life. :P

Matt,

It was always this sinking feeling of, "you're doing it wrong." I figured there had to be some kind of standard, or methodology. My logical, computer programmer, half was always at odds with my aesthetic, graphic designer half.

It started with just looking for statistics on common behavior. That lead to NN/G. Which then lead to their User Experience Conference. That introduced me to Bruce Tognazzini. The rest of a domino effect of knowledge expanding on knowledge.

Brenton

The world is going virtual and I want to be at the heart of it.

In a way, being a UX professional was a natural step for someone interested in creating better products. However, it was only when I was given the opportunity and responsibility to design my own applications that I realized I had no real expertise in building good web products.

As a software developer, I was always told what to do - by project managers, marketers, sales people, etc. None of this ever came out right, of course. And the one thing from all the years of building software, did one of them ever put me in front of a real customer or user.

After picking up About Face 3 by Cooper a few years ago, I felt as though a new world had opened up to me. The rest, as they say, is history.

• A love of design
• Because people have better things to do with their lives than waste time using poorly designed software