[Sigia-l] Off Topic Posts

[Eric Scheid]

On 10/3/06 3:34 AM, "Paula Thornton" <paula.thornton at prodigy.net> wrote:

> While many are in denial, I continue to collect artifacts which CLEARLY
> point out that the business community is willing to accept and 'pay for' a
> role that is a cross between IA/usability/experience design.

I've also seen a demand for roles involving the above plus Business
Analysis, coding and development, visual design, Account Management, or
Project Management. Not all at once, thankfully!

I would dread being on a list that addressed all those topic areas at once.
Many/most of those roles also have their own particular spike of
specialisations. Coders know all the nitty gritty details of achieving cross
platform compatibility in their work product; visual designers know more
about white space, balance, and colour themes than I ever care to; business
analysts know how to read company financial statements; usability people
know intimately how to conduct observation studies; and so on.

So, while there is an argument for a list catering to
IA/usability/experience, there is also an argument for a list catering to
IA/business-analyst/account-manager, and a third argument for
IA/coder/designer.

As someone whose interests include IA (amongst other interests) I really
don't want to subscribe to three lists just so I can pick out the nuggets
from the stream. I'd rather have one list on IA (and one list on database
geekery, and one list on cog-sci, and so on)

When I look at usability, in comparison to IA, I can see that there has been
fruit from that specialisation (especially coming from Jared Spool's UIE). I
believe we haven't plumbed the depths of IA yet, that there are many more
things we can discover that will enhance our understanding of IA ... but
going down the path to being generalists won't be helpful to that end.

Generalists are great for getting things done, and more power to them, but
they're lousy (IMHO) for advancing a field. Are we happy with the extent of
our collective knowledge of IA, or do we suspect we've only scratched the
surface? 

e.