[Sigia-l] Forcing Practice (IA autonomy)

[Emily Leahy]

I think we all agree that we'd rather do things right
the first time-- that's why we're in the profession in
the first place.  What I think some of us are
forgetting is that the IA almost never gets to make
the final decision.   While it seems that most of us
are very involved in "selling" good design and
usability, we can be over-ruled.  We can try to
influence the decision makers with case studies,
research, ROI stats, etc, but at the end of the day,
sadly, its almost always someone else's call. We all
agree that users suffer greatly when this happens and
we hate to see it, but what I think the original
poster wanted to know is: "How can I create the best
experience for my users given this unfortunate set of
circumstances?"  We can't just say to him, "if you
aren't going to do it right, tough, your efforts are
wasted!"  

And what I want to know is: If any of your are
practicing IAs and get to follow IA best practices on
every project, where do you work?  I'd like to send
you my resume :)

*Emily

---------------------- 
> > I second that. Accepting the notion that something
> internal does not
> > require the full design process sets a dangerous
> precedent. How much
> > longer will we be hearing "well, this is only
> going out a real small
> > subset of our users, so let's not worry about it
> too much"?
> 
> This is an interstiong sague to the original post
> and is tempting me to
> add more to this. For all those who have believe
> that 'internal things can
> be *yucky*' believes so because they think that
> 'usability' takes too much
> extra. However, there are cases out there that will
> tell you 'good' or
> 'bad' both takes roughly same time/resources/money
> if you can see it in a
> long run. Often the 'shit' gets established faster
> and later takes too
> much efforts to clean. I have often heard the wierd
> logic that "we can't
> improve, 'cos user is used for this...". This is a
> common non-sense.
> 
> So next time you say "let's do this thing, just like
> that... 'cos it's for
> internal", remember you will have to pay double to
> make it right next time
> - partly to clear the stuff first and rest to do it
> right. Bad design is
> like any evil of this society - gets established too
> soon.
> 
> BTW, whos line was it - "Just do it... 'cos it's
> internal"?
> 
> Pradyot Rai
> UI guy, Fannie Mae


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