[Sigia-l] clash of the viewpoints

[David Heller]

I think the article is annoying, too. Personally I find no conflict of
interest between ED and IA, as IA is an obvious subset of ED.

As I wrote in B&A ages ago now, it is in the interest of IAs to focus on
what is great about IA, instead of trying to be everything to everyone.
The problem is that culturally many have used the term IA has a job
title instead of as a role description. My job has always been way
beyond IA whether or not I included IA has one of my roles. Chris is
right that most of what I do is ID (interaction design), but that is
because I'm an application developer as opposed to a website developer.
I like the way that JJG splits up IA from Interaction in his now
infamous chart.

But what is ED then. Well, to me it is not even comparable to IA. IA is
a discipline, ED is a framework, or set of philosophies that effect many
disciplines.

The real question is, does ED say anything more valuable than the
previous frameworks? Or is it just a language that enables graphic
designers to feel welcome into the world of UCD. I see nothing all that
different in the rhetoric of ED than what has previously been said by
UCD practioners except perhaps more focus on the end view by the user.
It extends UCD to the visual layer w/o sacrificing the skeletal,
structural, and behavioral layers which UCD had previous focused on.

But hey, this discussion is just a naval staring kinda thing. In the
end, find the community of peers that best fits your interests and goals
and go with that. Personally, I find that both ED and IA are very
relevant to my needs and I see no conflict in them. But I do agree w/
Chris that we definitely need something that is more about ID from a
practictioners side, instead of the academic side that CHI represents.

-- dave

David Heller
Sr. User Interface Designer
Documentum: The Leader in Enterprise Content Management
925.600.5636
 
david.heller at documentum.com
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