[Sigia-l] Everything is Miscellaneous -- Titles

[Stew Dean]

On 04/05/07, Ziya Oz <listera at earthlink.net> wrote:
> Turmite:
>
> > the visual design group is OUTSIDE the UX domain for our organization.
>
> > we truly cover a pretty BROAD swath of UX.
>
> > BEFORE you design a new feature or website."
>
> > 'market' the LARGER discipline.
>
> The 'larger' discipline is Design. Designers have created products,
> services, experiences for millennia in one form or another. You recognize
> that there's a larger 'force' here but won't acknowledge it for fear of its
> graphical-only connotations. Fair enough.

Design is the what anyone does when they create something of use.
Architect is also a viable label.  As you point out design is heavily
associated with visual design and the common usage of 'I am a
designer' is that they are a graphic designer.

The big picture of what I think we all do is User Experience Design,
or Interaction Design. Removing the User Experience or Interaction
part then makes thing too broad.

> The answer, however, is not in separating any significant aspect of Design
> into disjointed organizational fiefdoms, like pretending visual design can
> and should live divorced from structure, function, interaction, etc. How can
> UX serve its full potential when the first plane of contact with users, the
> visual interface, is intentionally outside its domain?

It certainly doesn't and shouldn't be separate. BUT in my experience
on person is often not capable of doing more than a couple of roles.
I am a trained graphic designer but I would not do graphic design on
my larger projects simply because it requires a change of approach and
a different way of thinking. The result of my graphic design on a
project where I was mostly doing the interface design and information
architecture would be poor graphic design. Like wise I can also code
but again that is a different brain set.  If I was concerned about the
back end workings I would take more of an engineering mind set, one
that I can say, from experience, is not beneficial to the end user
experience.

If I could clone myself I could do all those jobs but they require
different perspectives and takes on the same project and require you
to take up a different side of the advocacy.

I find having done all these roles means I can easily provide those
I'm working with what they need to do their job and also know
effective ways of standing up for the final user experience if I feel
the visual design or technical decisions are having a negative effect
on it. If I was doing both those roles I simply would not have the
right perspective.

Inversely I don't see the role of user research (or usability as some
call it) as incompatable to the role of the IA and, if possible, feel
the two should be integrated as much as possible - first hand
experience of users is always better than trying to decipher a power
point presentation or set of figures.

So yes design is the biggest picture but it's not what we're concerned
with here and not how we should communicate what we do as it will lead
to confusion because of what is understood already.

Stewart Dean
- Show quoted text -





>
> ----
> Ziya
>
> Design doesn't add value, it creates it.
>
>
> ------------
> IA Summit 2008: "Experiencing Information"
> April 10-14, 2008, Miami, Florida
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--
Stewart Dean