Jesse James Garrett

Today marks 25 years since the seven of us threw in together to prove that there was a business to be built in doing user experience work. Not web design work or interactive design work or even information architecture work. The company was called Adaptive Path, and the stand we took was for user experience, whatever tools, techniques, or technologies might be required to deliver on it.

We did not even call the work design at first. Too many agencies that prioritized flash (or Flash™️) over real attention to user needs had poisoned the environment for what we wanted to bring as a creative force. Eventually, as the market’s perception of the value proposition for design shifted, so did the way we positioned our work.

I believe our clients will remember us for both our empathy and our risk-taking. We heard over and over again that we “asked good questions” and were “really good listeners”. I always felt that deeply understanding our clients was essential for approaching the unknown territory we guided them through. These are some of the elements of our creative culture that I’m most proud of.

But the risk-taking! The endless (and sometimes, it did indeed feel endless) questioning of accepted wisdom. The collective willingness to encourage each other to go beyond our own ideas of what was possible. The safety we created (or tried to create) for the wild experimental in our processes.

There was a kind of unbridled joy in our collective discovery of new possibilities. It’s part of what attracts me to the AI transformation work I’m doing now: the feeling of surfing the edge of possibility, imagining the new and then making it real.

But today I still look back on the extraordinary pool of talent we drew together to make it all possible. Despite having no experience and no expertise in managing a company, we managed to find people who shared our values—if not necessarily our perspectives—whose participation deepened our work and helped Adaptive Path have the global influence it ultimately did.

If you were a part of that journey—if you were an employee or intern or contractor with us during the 13 years that Adaptive Path was an independent company—I hope you’ll give us a wave sometime. After 25 years, our little group still casts a bright light.