[Sigia-l] RE: IA Practice Maturation

[celia romaniuk]

On Sat, 20 Apr 2002, Tal Herman wrote:

> This is good for us as an industry segment, and clearly represents a
> significant and important new stage in the maturation of IA as a profession.
> Are the Europeans on the list, or those who've practiced in Europe seeing
> similar trends?  Who drives demand for IAs or IA-type skills in Europe?

For the past year, I've worked in the UK offices of KPMG's Design and
Engineering group (formerly known as Metrius). (And breathe, and
relax). The D&E group offer a range of services similar to a traditional
new media agency.

The projects we're involved with involve IA work as default. I think that
the people who bid for and run projects see IA as one of the more tangible
range of skills that we offer. Perhaps this is because they've worked with
systems and business analysts before, and understand the general idea; and
have also been paying attention to research which says usable systems are
valuable. They also like the fact that they can conceptualise the value of
IA (they all know what it's like to be frustrated by using a web site).

Of course, getting to work on projects isn't the full story - we face many
day-to-day issues with clients as we ask for access to their staff and
their customer base. I've found that a good approach in these situations
is to wear away gently and let the clients/project managers see how our
listening to our expertise can help to create improvements in the
product. 

One general impression of my work in the UK over the last three years has
been that once people have worked with an IA they're keen to have their
expertise on the projects they work on subsequently. Perhaps as a result
of this, most of the jobs that I hear about over here are through people
who've worked with IAs before and see the value an IA would bring to
their current project.

Celia

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