[Sigia-l] Programming IAs was: Little things an IA MUST know/do

[Nancy Kaplan]

I'd like to weigh in here more as an academic than as a practitioner 
(though I did once develop an actual application for educational use 
long before there was a Web -- I "designed" but others coded).  In 
the Interaction Design and Information Architecture curriculum at the 
University of Baltimore, we have tried very hard to balance technical 
knowledge and experience with design knowledge and experience 
precisely because it is very difficult to know the shape and 
dimensions of the problem space you are working in if you do not have 
some level of first-hand knowledge of the tools and technologies that 
help define the problem space in the first place.

I think it is very helpful for every member of a development team to 
know more than simply how programmers think.  As Lawrence Lessig has 
so brilliantly explained, code is a kind of law.  The design of the 
database behind your usable and aesthetically pleasing Web pages 
absolutely determine what the site can and cannot do.  The things you 
can imagine your programmers can deliver with javascript and cookies 
should be shaped by your own appreciation of the scripting language's 
chief methods and "preferred ways of doing things."

So it's not just a matter of understanding what programmers do and 
how they define their problems and solutions.  It seems to me at 
least that having had experience with the constraints and 
"affordances" one or more scripting languages or programming 
languages come with has real payoff for interaction designers, user 
experience experts, graphic designers, even people who write verbal 
content for complex sites.  And I say this as someone with no formal 
training in CS -- I have a PhD in English Poetry and Painting!  But 
as I moved out of the humanities and into HCI work over the past 30 
years, I have learned enough programming and scripting to have that 
sort of tactile feel for the code that I think helps me be a better 
team member.

I won't ever be the technical lead on a project but I am a 
knowledgeable participant in discussions about alternatives for 
solving the technical issues that always arise.  And I now know how 
to tell the difference between "can't" and "don't want to."

It would in my view be helpful if programmers knew more about 
usability and human factors and also visual design.  Not so that they 
could take over others' jobs, but just so that they also have an 
experience-based feel for the problems and solutions others 
habitually work with.
-- 
Nancy Kaplan
Professor
Director, School of Information Arts and Technologies
1319 N. Charles St.
Baltimore, MD 21201-5779

Phone:  410.837.5319 ][ FAX: 410.837.6252
http://iat.ubalt.edu/kaplan