[Sigia-l] the white coats are coming?

[Hankinson, Jody]

Ziya said:
If you go through the archives of this list, you'll discover that there are
some people (many not coincidentally in the testing business) who argue that
the future of IA is in white lab coats, "scientific" methods, usability
"engineering", etc. They argue essentially for design by testing. In case
you haven't noticed :-) I have a beef with that notion.

[Hankinson, Jody] 
A little off topic, but every time this discussion happens, I think of the
book, The Intuitionist by Colson Whitehead,
http://www.powells.com/cgi-bin/biblio?inkey=7-0385493002-1

The main character is an elevator inspector. "She is an Intuitionist, able
to intuit defects purely by tuning in to the machinery. The opposition, the
Empiricists, practise dutiful and routine physical inspection." 

Much of the book is about the underlying conflict between the two
disciplines and how the differences are exploited politically. No great
lessons we don't already know.

But I like the terminology and think it is fitting for many of the
discussions we have. I suspect most of the list's subscribers put themselves
in the middle of the Intuitionist/Empiricists spectrum. I'd say I'm more to
the Intuitionist side of things: more user interviews than quantifiable
testing; heuristics; deep content analysis and thorough understanding of the
business. Shake well and what settles gets adjusted based on small feedback
sessions. 

I'm not sure where I'm going with this. Except to say, here's another spin
on an old discussion. 

- Jody