[Sigia-l] Some basic question!

[Lorelei Brown]

Hoo-eee! It's always those simple 'why is the sky
blue?' questions that kill you. 

I think this goes nicely with the eternal
self-definition question, though. It's great to say
'noun/verb' (which is elegant, don't get me wrong),
and talk about theory, but Nuno brings up the looming
specter of the real world. 

How do you justify your salary? What is your return on
investment? These are ugly questions, but I think many
of us are faced with answering them when layoffs come
around.

First, I'm curious - how many of you actually spend
100% of your time doing just IA? No management, no
requirements, no BPE, just grouping information and
perhaps interaction design or UI. If you do have that
luxury, are you in a big company? Work for yourself?


> 1) What sustains the role of an IA in a team
> developing the infrastructure for a site or group of
sites (Project Manager, Developers, DBA's, etc
etc)/(editorial team, webmaster, trainers, etc
> etc)?

Being able to see the big picture. Since IAs focus on
the way pieces of information are going to relate to
each other and the user, and what path it's going to
take, they are in the position to propose a solution
to all parties about how things are going to be
presented.

> 5) How does the role of IA relate with QA team?

Depends. Some IAs have a hand in writing requirements,
which are used by the QA team as pass/fail tests. Or,
if you're like me, you're pushy enough to insist that
your vision be followed. Then you make sure that key
parts of your design are part of the QA requirements.
No navigation in the shopping cart? Severe risk. 

> 6) How does the role of IA relate with the Marketing
> in an Organization?

Saying 'Hold on there, sparky. You really don't want
to do that in Flash. Really'. (kidding) 

As always, YMMV.

Lorelei

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