[Sigia-l] IA research?

[Lyle_Kantrovich at cargill.com]

Dave said:
> "gut feel" ... that is what all design is about and I think this is
> why research to me is often a distraction to our practice and not
> something that helps it.

and then said:
> But I think the academic community wants us to have "proof" before we
> take that success and turn it into confidence. But the proof of the
> success IS the success. 

Two points:
1) How can you say research "is often a distraction" if we practitioners 
can't cite a lot of research that's been done?  Furthermore, consider 
that PeterV started this discussion (and that he's a Very Smart Guy(tm), 
and very actively involved in the IA community and even wrote a book on 
IA) -- when I consider that it was someone like Peter who asked if we'd 
seen any recent *quality* IA research,  that's good enough for me to 
conclude that there's not much quality IA research being done.  Anyone 
who's been distracted by IA research, please raise your hand.

2) Statements like "the proof of the success IS the success" are the 
types of statements that kept medieval medicine practices like 
bloodletting in vogue for so long.  :)  

Try your hand at Medieval medicine
http://www.learner.org/exhibits/middleages/healtact2.html

More on Medieval medicine: 
http://www.learner.org/exhibits/middleages/morhealt.html


Good research tries to isolate variables so you understand WHY something 
is successful and WHAT ELSE it might be used for...that's how we might 
hope to get the IA equivalent of penicillin some day.

A better statement might be: 
"Past successes MIGHT give you a hint at ways to succeed in the future.  
Your mileage may vary."  Research might help us better understand how 
much it might vary.

Regards,

Lyle

----

Croc O' Lyle - A blog that now has new content for IA's!
http://crocolyle.blogspot.com



-----Original Message-----
From: dheller at gmail.com [mailto:dheller at gmail.com]
Sent: Monday, April 26, 2004 2:49 PM
To: sigia-l at asis.org
Subject: Re: [Sigia-l] IA research?


On Mon, 26 Apr 2004 15:34:37 -0400, Peter VanDijck <pvandijck at lds.com> 
wrote:
> Good examples! Still, I stand by my point, I just can't think of a 
good
> reason. Gut feel: IA needs research.

I think you just defeated yourself w/ your last statement.
"gut feel" ... that is what all design is about and I think this is
why research to me is often a distraction to our practice and not
something that helps it. IMHO there is already too much academics in
our business and for us it is a ball-and-chain towards our movement
towards success. I oft think of things in terms of if things SHOULD be
a certain way than obviously the world is heading in that direction (I
think of it as reverse Entropy). What can I say I'm an optimist. But I
think in our case the ground we have made is huge compared to the
ground we have lost over the last few years. There are more of us than
ever and from what I can tell we are doing some pretty neat work:
TiVO, Google, SharePoint are just small examples of some really great
IA/UX design.

But I think the academic community wants us to have "proof" before we
take that success and turn it into confidence. But the proof of the
success IS the success. Yes, there is ton to learn from these
successes, but business case studies and competitive heuristic
analysis does a lot more than academic research in our realm.

I do like the innovation is out there goal that Peter is reaching for.
WebLogs are great, but are they really doing anything new? I mean RSS
is pretty cool, but all these are are technology mechanisms, not
really IA or UX success stories and none of this came out of academic
research. I like where Peter ended ... stickin' w/ my "gut feel" that
I get after a bunch of user research is done.

On a more positive side of this discussion, I oft feel that my
inspiration for innovation is through my study, not of acadmics, but
rather of other design disciplines. Think of it as "schools".
Deconstructing other forms of design is a great method for applying
the thoughts the methods that you gleen from that process and apply
them to your own medium. "What is a "bahaus" taxonomy?" for example.
Going to design museums, furniture stores, bang & olfsen shops, etc.
inspire a lot.

What academic research does give us is both inspiration and sword
towards implementation in one stroke. But to me this speaks more to
the respect and trust your peers have in you as a designers as much as
it does about needing support from research materials.

-- dave
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