I often read thoughts about how my field of work (UX) should be locked behind certifications, agreements, mountains of papers and hypes of official stamps. Then I look back through the path I walked and wonder what we are so afraid of. My UX education was a path I had to build. The studies I could find were years behind the actual state of the field, but they were also the only one available.
For 3 years, I worked, studying things that would reveal to be mostly useless to the path I found myself in later. I remember late nights trying to find some time to build my own education, reading psychological textbooks, building my first websites, learning to bend the computer to my will. I remember falling asleep on books on complex systems, trying to find my way through an uncertain future.
I remember also an innocent conversation, when a friend was leaving the country, with one of his friend that taught me about the UX field. Suddenly I discovered something at the intersection of my interests, unique and beautiful. Something that captivated my mind for years and still do.
Our field is bright and beautiful, what make us riches is the multiple path we crossed to arrive where we are now. The field is diverse, wide and open, there's no UX designer like another and it's why I love it so much. Instead of trying to build walls and gates, pretending to care about our field while all we really fear behind is to become irrelevant, we should embrace our diversity and welcome all those UX babies arms wide open.
The youngest crops that are slowly coming into the field have better teachings than we ever had. Still I see too much people of my generation trying to maintain them out of our fields, pretending that they didn't learn enough. Stop building gates, pave the way, build welcoming arches.
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