[Sigia-l] What happened to the good IAs

[David Malouf]

uh? the definition was implicit then. An engineer is what it takes to
become certified/licensed as an engineer.

So it isn't in the practice, but rather in the process or licensing or
certification.

That to me is something that IA hasn't achieved yet. Why? well the
whole big/little question.

But putting that aside for a moment. I see no reason (as Chris Fahey
already stated) of any real consequence why certification is required
for any UX profession. I feel it will be far more damaging. I.e. is a
an MS certified programmer really a better one? Is an HFI certified
usability professional really the better one? I have not found any
real correlation to certification to fit for my needs as an employer
and the reason is that I hire too specifically to my own needs.

To the initial problem set of where did all the good IA's go, it is
not about certification, but rather about education and career path.
Rightfully so, we can't continue to play the grass-roots dot-com card
and grow a profession out of it. It needs some foundations to grow on
that have to be more stable and fundamental than going to UX Week, UI
Conf week or Usability Week, or Cooper Practicum, etc. etc.

The question of "What do I want to be when I grow up? Oh! an IA" needs
to have the followup question much more concretely answered than we
currently have today in practice, "How do I become an IA?" ... BTW,
this problem is the same for usability professional, and interaction
designer as well.

-- dave

On 6/21/07, Karl Fast <karl.fast at pobox.com> wrote:
>
> > Karl, I think Dick was just saying that it is complicated to
> > implemented. That's what I understood anyway.
>
> Dick's right. No matter what kind of certification you're talking
> about, it's a long and complicated process.
>
> I was responding to Ziya, however. I said it was a complicated issue
> (in more than just implementation), and Ziya asked why I made such a
> claim.
>
> No matter what angle you look at, I think certification is a complex
> issue. I'm sure that's especially true of implementation, though
> thankfully I have no direct experience with it.
>
>
> > And we will never be able to certify IA until we define the damn
> > thing, which we obviously will never do.
>
> I'm not entirely sure about that. As precedent I'd cite engineering
> (my undergrad degree, BTW). For most of it's history, engineering in
> Canada has operated without a formal definition.
>
> Engineers belong to a special class of professions, along with
> laywers and doctors and architects, that are protected and
> "certified" through an act of legislation. This gives them a lot of
> power, legal status, and protection. But there are downsides,
> notably the high entry barrier: it takes a lot of time and money to
> enter these professions.
>
> Surprisingly, there was no formal definition of engineering in
> Canada until the late 80s, even though engineers had been protected
> by legislation in every province for decades, often going back to
> when the province was created.
>
> In effect, the legislation provided what we could call a 'de facto'
> definition, or perhaps a 'working' definition. That is, engineering
> was whatever a professionally licensed engineer did, more or less.
>
> My only point here is that the definition can follow from practice,
> instead of the other way around. We don't need to have a perfect
> definition to pursue certification, only a reasonable one (I'm not
> saying we should pursue certification or nail down a definition;
> just trying to explicate the relationship between the two).
>
>
>
>
>
> --
> Karl Fast
> http://www.livingskies.com/
>
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-- 
David Malouf
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