[Sigia-l] Information Architecture 3.0

[Alexander Johannesen]

On 12/3/06, Andrew Boyd <facibus at gmail.com> wrote:
> I've mentioned this before I guess - I used to be married to a systems
> engineer who used to look down on the local car mechanic calling
> himself an automotive engineer. The labels should never be more than a
> convenience, otherwise I think we're in danger of forgetting the job
> we went in to do.

Hmm. There's a few things to be said about this that works the other
way as well. Some times that title says something about the person
with that title. What's the difference between a business analyst and
a user-experience alchymist? They probably do the same job, at least
in spirit, but I'm pretty certain they do it very differently. I can't
tell you exactly what the difference would be, but there are
underlying currents of things, things like if a person is allowed to
even call himself something as eclectic as UX alchymist, is he an A4
business analyst or something more / slightly different? Is that good
or bad? Who knows, but I think it's better for people to use whatever
context you can give.

If I present myself with my former title to people I meet, certain
expectations arise that probably aren't warranted, and my job can
possibly be called something else which I indeed do; I never present
myself with that title, but a different title that indicates more my
approach to things, often customised to the context of the people I
meet.

However, It's also interesting in another way, as I'm job hunting
these days ; if people advertised jobs as IA or UCD at best, I could
at least find them. Right now they are usually called "business
analyst" which seriously is a flawed title in my UCD world. Not all of
us have a working network of friends that help, especially if you're
new to the field or work in cities with limitations.


Alex
-- 
"Ultimately, all things are known because you want to believe you know."
                                                         - Frank Herbert
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