[Sigia-l] Sigia-l Digest, Vol 33, Issue 24

[Christopher Fahey]

> Think about engineers and doctors. I don't want just anyone 
> designing bridges and poking around in my lower colon. I want 
> someone with the proper credentials. Someone who has been 
> certified, in some way, by someone, because that gives me 
> some faith in their skills and, crucially, some recourse if 
> something goes wrong. 
 
First, there is a vast difference betweeen doctors or bridge-builders
and information architects. Sure, what we do is sometimes important and
in theory could even be a matter of life and death, such as in the
design of a diagnostic report software UI. But even granting that, it's
still miles away from opening up a human body or building a bridge that
will convey fifty thousand people a day over a river. And in any event,
anything we build that is a matter of life and death is likely to be
evaluated and operated by a person who is certified in their field --
i.e., a doctor or a pilot. If a doctor screws up a diagnosis because
they misread a crappy UI, make no mistake: it's the doctor's fault, not
the IA's. 
 
Second, doctors, pilots, and engineers achieve certification after not
just rigorous testing, but also on-the-job observation, peer and board
review, background checks, complex legal constraints, academic systems,
and long-term monitoring of their professional history. To propose that
IAs should have such a complex and expensive process (not that you're
proposing this, but some people seem to be) is crazy.
 
Let's get this clear: When we talk of IA certification, we are not
talking about the kind of rigorous process doctors and pilots go
through. We are talking about the kind of quick-and-relatively-cheap
process computer programmers and PMs go through when being hired in bulk
by large corporations, a process that is explicitly designed to help
incompetant or lazy managers hire resources without understanding what
those people actually do. 
 
-Cf 
 
Christopher Fahey 
____________________________ 
Behavior 
http://www.behaviordesign.com 
me: http://www.graphpaper.com