[Sigia-l] at what point does IA et al. become meaningless?

[Alexander Johannesen]

Hi,

Samantha Starmer <starmer at u.washington.edu> wrote:
> I actually find this 'IA vision' role the most interesting.  I have had positions where my 
> scope was core IA deliverables, but I find that I prefer positions like my current job 
> where I use my IA slant to shape the strategy and long term thought leadership for an
> entire program rather than just on individual projects.

Exactly! This is my current work position too, and I'm loving it ; I'm
making sure that the designs are based on HCD and I make sure my teams
keep this in mind throughout our projects and beyond. It *is* working
great, and we and the users all feel better about the result. (And
yes, we have other projects not run this way, and no, we're not really
all that happy with those)

> I think that the benefit of all of this for the company is that the primary business
> decision maker (myself) always has IA needs in the forefront and can speak to 
> them in any circumstance vs. the limited pockets of time in a project a dedicated 
> IA might otherwise be involved.  This allows for the IA to continually be 'living' 
> rather than an artifact of particular projects.

IA from the trenches is tougher than IA from the top. I'm lucky to be
working in a place where the top understands the importance of it and
where it permutes down to our projects and people. I can't stress
enough the importance of this.


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