[Sigia-l] The Need for a Definition of I/A - real world example (was 'first principles')

[George Olsen]

Richard Dalton wrote:
> In my organization we have a strong need to bring clarity to lots of
> people's jobs - we have a lot of people involved in various aspects of
> "creating websites" - Information Architecture (whatever that is),
> Interaction Design, Graphic Design, Usability, etc ... and the
> interaction  between some of these roles (I/A and I/D in particular)
> needs some  improvement. With a clearer definition of the roles and
> responsibilities  (based on sound understanding of the discipline) I
> think things could be  so much better.

Well I gave my 2 cents on the distinction between roles a few years ago.
<http://www.interactionbydesign.com/thoughts/perspectives/00000003.html>
(see in particular, page 3). Probably could use some revision, but it's
reasonably comprehensive (also be sure to read the comments, for a few
things I missed initially).

Mind you there's a big difference between job _roles_ and job _titles._
Not all IA is done by IAs, not all IAs do IA, etc. Which is where a lot of
the confusion comes in the hiring arena.

The difficult question is how you organize all the necessary roles into a
job positions at your particular company. As has been pointed out, there
are a lot of other professions that face similar issues. "Graphic design"
has a large number of subfields, so if someone says they're a designer,
it's often useful to clarify whether they're a publication designer, a
broadcast designer, or a packaging designer.

George