On Dec 20, 2007, at 6:02 AM, Nick Iozzo wrote: > Andrei, you did not respond to the one of the key points I was > making in the original post. That the innovation comes from the > interplay of form and function, that interplay plays out best if > you have strong designers representing each perspective. One for > function one for form.
That interplay and innovation comes out best when one person is able to work through it all. Not a team. Teams are needed due to project deadlines, scope, etc. Teams are the norm, true, but the ideal is still one person. I very rarely see teams innovate. I often see single designers innovate. > No reasonable sized project has just one person on it doing all of > the design and coding. You will have a team. With that the case, > then you appear to be arguing for the Visionary Designer role. The > single person who defines the entire design and then has folks do > the details. You can see my talk I posted earlier in a different thread for the answer to that question. > What I am advocating is the team approach. One person is > responsible for the functional design another is responsible for > the form design. You dived this responsibility to create a creative > tension. You set it up so these two sides have a tug of war with > each other. If they have worked together a long time, then they > will know how to push each other to be better. This is a mistake, imho. I don't operate like that, and my design teams don't operate like that. The division of skills I use is where the designer has to code/build the prototype. Outside of that, designers who work with me are expected to be interaction/graphic/ information hybrids. I myself am that as well and have been since I started doing this work. > To be a good interaction designer, you need to gain the empathy of > your users. You do this by doing actual research not by reading > what someone else has done. You need to be able to communicate > visually. You need to be able to validate your designs. A good > designer for the form of the application needs all of these as well! You need empathy, but more importantly, you need data and skills and the ability to make the right decisions. I know lots of people who empathize with their users who still make pretty bad products. > So the difference is not in the skills it is in the roles they play > to get the job done. The functional designer may never select final > typography, but they better be able to call the form designer on > bad selections. The form designer may never write detailed > interaction specifications, but they better be able to point out a > better way to do something if one exists. Again, this is mistake. Why is this the case by the way? Because learning the basic of good graphic design is not rocket science. It's quite straight forward. Once technology flattens some more, once the school systems start doing better blends of ID, IxDA and Art and Design, then the younger talent will provide both and more. Further, the basics of good interaction design are also not rocket science. They are also quite straight forward. Once you have the basics down, the rest is desire, passion, drive and good old experience over time from practice, practice and more practice. Requiring one person t know and be able to do both is not a high bar imho. I do it, my designers do it, and I see lots of other designers coming into the fold who also can do it. And as I said, that skill set is *still* less than what architects and industrial designers are expected to know and do in their professions, which is why I push for the prototyping skills, to reach the same bar as them. > I believe I response to all of your points so I cut out the > original message in an effort to keep the response short per forum > guidelines. But here is the permelink to our reply if I missed > something: http://www.ixda.org/discuss.php?post=23782#23784 I did respond to your points, by stating that your larger suggestion that people need to be Leonardo is not correct given what industrial designers and architects learn and do. I felt that covered it. -- Andrei Herasimchuk Principal, Involution Studios innovating the digital world e. [EMAIL PROTECTED] c. +1 408 306 6422 ________________________________________________________________ *Come to IxDA Interaction08 | Savannah* February 8-10, 2008 in Savannah, GA, USA Register today: http://interaction08.ixda.org/ ________________________________________________________________ Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ....... [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe ................ http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines ............ http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .................. http://www.ixda.org/help
