I asked for it: FLUX

Update (May 26, 2006): It seems Stefan has (temporarily?) removed the description of his process.

Okay, so I asked for it: Every time I present the work we did on StUX, the corporate Standards for User eXperience I helped develop while working for EzGov, I actually encourage people to develop their own process.

And now somebody did...

Stefan Smagula, whom I've met at the first Design Engaged conference, created his own verion of StUX, and called it FLUX.
He also developed his own diagram with activities and roles:

...which looks a whole lot like our original diagram:


So now I'm not sure if I got the message accross...

At the end of those presentations about user experience design methods, where I encourage others to develop their own methods, I always include this slide:

As you may be able to read, the first line says: "Don't copy our diagram/deliverables". And I mean that. It looks strange to have it look so much like ours. It looks wrong.

So, as much as I like to see others actually develop methods after they've seen my work, I think they should try harder in making their process' visuals look different.

I will ask Stefan, who was kind enough to put a "Thanks to Peter Boersma for inspiration" in the corner of his diagram, to come up with a new design. If not for me, then for the visual designer who designed the original diagram, Alex Constantinou (now a visual designer at the only company that I know that uses the ".biz" TLD: Variomatic).