The background:

The UK UPA recently released a salary survey for 2010 (warning: PDF) which included a tiny overview of freelancers day rates and ‘salary satisfaction’.

These rates, which could now be considered a reference point for both current and potential freelancers and clients, were drawn from a base of 44 responses (up from 39 last year). This is a pitifully small sample and no where near the sample size needed to provide any confidence that this data is indicative of the current situation in the field.

Given that I reckon I personally know about 30 UX freelancers in the UK, and there are many I don’t know – I reckon we can do better than that.

So, rather than whinge at the UPA anymore, I’ve drafted a survey and I would love it if we can find all the UX Freelancers we know in the UK and get them to complete it.

It’s totally anonymous, so if you want to find out what the results are you’ll need to check back here (add a comment below if you want notification), or follow me on Twitter.

The survey will close on 10 December, and I’m hoping we can get at least 150 responses between now and then.

So, if you’re a UX Freelancer in the UK, please come and complete the survey now.

If you know a UX Freelancer, please point them to this survey and encourage them to complete it.

Let’s create an accurate view of the UK UX Freelancing marketplace that can help guide all of us as we set our rates and that can help our clients make good decisions about the appropriate rate of pay for people in our industry.

• @veen talking about designing our way through data
• @veen things that happened in 1974 (meta = hippy goes mainstream). A v important year for the internet #uxlondon (also the year i was born)
• a tiny little 6yr old epiphany for @veen in 1974 when he first saw Pong – ooh, I can control what’s on the screen!
• tools for participation lots of capacity to store data = some pretty cool effects
• there are 24hrs of video uploaded every 8 seconds on YouTube.
• as a designer I can look into the data and see if there is something in there I can use to inform the design (eg. the colour)
• I’ve taken the story out of the data and shown it by applying design elements
• ‘decorating’ data rather than using design to provide better access is dangerous. @veen
• Google Analytics interface inspired by Indiana Jones @veen
• use visualisation to change behaviour (statistics can be anesthetizing, hard to make meaning)
• find the story in the data, assign different visual queues to each dimension, remove everything that isn’t telling the story
• mini theme from #uxlondon – don’t be a control freak
• think more about giving yr audience tools so they can find their own patterns & stories, rather than controlling their experience
• shout out to Dopplr at
• provide filters to enable clarity (helping people make sense of data) @veen
• Storytelling using data visualisation is incredibly compelling Now we need to give people tools so they can find their own stories
• @veen tshirt: ‘Math is Easy, Design is Hard’. Not a popular tshirt at Google.
• research is great but it’s just data that you use to inform your design. Data doesn’t tell you how to design. shoutout to @stop
• @veen quotes @zeldman: ‘start with the user, but know yourself’. Thinks this should be inverted
• ‘The purpose of computing is insight, not numbers.’ Richard Hamming, 1962 #uxlondon (via @ritchielee)

I’ve been thinking a bit about this lately and I’d love to workshop it with you…

For people born in 2008 (and probably a few years before) – ambient intimacy will just be a normal state. It won’t have the novelty that it has had for us. The ability to stay in touch with people that we have stronger or weaker ties with in this light weight way will be something available to them from a very young age and – in all probability – throughout their entire lives.

What do you imagine the repercussions will be?

For example, assuming that within the next few years, more and more people will have a social presence online, my little guy will have no real excuse to ‘lost contact’ with anyone he makes contact with. Can you imagine a kindergarten equivalent of Facebook? I can. Extrapolate from there.

What does that mean? Being able to ‘lose touch’ is, when you think about it, a pretty valuable luxury. How will we negotiate this I wonder.

What about ‘contact’ scalability. How many contacts could you accumulate over the course of a lifetime if you start really young? How will we manage that? If we get stressed about our mum’s friending us on FaceBook now, what do our kids have coming? We think Twitter gets distracting now – how will we manage all the noise that such a huge number of contacts will generate? Or will we all just shut up? (I doubt it).

How will we manage our identity online as our identity changes? Will this pressure that seems to be about to have an ‘integrated’ online persona (work, social, family, all in together) continue? If not, how will different personas evolve and how will the be related? Will we be able to re-invent ourselves? Will it be as fun? Will our kids ever forgive their parents for putting so many photos of them on Flickr when they were babies?

On the brighter side though, imagine how powerful and extensive these networks will be – the ability to motivate, research, refer, inspire, inquire. How distributed and trusted information sources will be.

Put on your future goggles and imagine what it would be like… what do you see?