[spam] Re: The Value of "IA" or Whatnot, was Re: [Sigia-l] The New Nielsen?

[Peter Merholz]

Christina sed:
> Arguments like
>
> 1. Know the medium
> 2. Know the user base
> 3. Design for the user base
> 4. Know the business goals
> 5. Design for the business goals
> 6. Don't make wild generalizations
> 7. Make designs that are usable and pleasurable

In this thread, the only points of those you made are 1 and 7.
http://www.info-arch.org/lists/sigia-l/0207/0273.html

Making this list of 7 items a glib response, and not really furthering the
discussion.

David Heller sed:
> While I agree that business want us to speak in the practical, if we let
> them drive us too far down that road we will be loosing our greatest
> value. Why do I say that? B/c I feel we are designers (sorry Christina),
> and that design is about the visceral. I also don't want to live in a
> world where we gain business but stop doing what we wanted to be in
> business doing.

Which I don't think I completely agree with. Partly because I don't quite
understand what it means that "design is about the visceral". I'd argue very
much that it is NOT. Design usually about specifying some solution, whether
it's the structure of a building, the form of a pencil, the schema of a
database, or whathaveyou.

There are forms of design that have a visceral impact--consumer product
design, advertising design, architecture, etc. But I believe that those
forms are far less a factor in the overall World Of Design than meeting
practical/functional needs.

I guess my point here is, in part, to contradict notions like "design is
visceral," because I think they provide us excuses so that we don't have to
deal with the difficult issues of measuring design value. A theme that
recurred in the 5th Advance is how we *have* to push ourselves out of our
comfort zone. If we want to remain relevant, we *have* to tackle these
possibly unsavory issues of real value.

--peter