Dialog Box was created at Weave’s founding with the goal to “...extend beyond the traditional book review section and feature critical dialogue not only with books but with other media that set the boundaries of library [user experience].” As new editors settle into our roles with the journal, we reconceive our original aims.

Dialogues about user experience should reflect the possible and not the predominant. The boundaries of UX are fluid, broad, and impact most aspects of work in libraries regardless of our official job duties or the spaces we are permitted to occupy. Weave’s voice has limitations, with our current editors and board reflecting majority white and middle class values, with most of us holding permanent positions at privileged institutions. These limits influence which narratives shape UX.

Dialog Box offers a broad invitation to library workers and others who may not view themselves as ‘UX people.’ In particular we are interested in pieces which avoid the traditional scholarly voice. A dialogue is a conversation and taking the opportunity to more broadly conceive of how Dialog Box legitimizes those conversations makes for a richer, more inclusive, and engaging discussion. All of us are practitioners in some form: user experience belongs to everyone. We invite you to consider your work for submission.

This includes but is not limited to submissions taking the form of:  

• Email or social media symposium
• Practitioner interviews
• Intermittent columns
• Ethnographic and/or personal narratives
• Interactive pieces, artwork, zines
• Visual note-taking from conferences
• “Thing Explainers” that break down difficult concepts and systems

Addressing topics such as, but not limited to:

• Privacy
• Politics of measurement and assessment
• All forms of accessibility
• Implications of UX as an intersectional social justice issue
• UX as a reflection of organizational culture
• Analysis of power, labor, and organizing in design, UX, or library systems
• Engaging the concepts of maintenance, failure, and innovation

We are interested in highlighting work from marginalized groups, precarious workers, students, and other voices absent from these subjects. We’re here for the challenging and difficult, the well-substantiated manifesto. We’d like to see the draft you can’t quite get rid of, the thing someone called you brave for writing. We want to amplify voices and emphasize the possible.

Submit your pitch or draft through our website or contact us at helloweaveux@umich.edu with your thoughts and questions.