Hi All: Some very interesting posts. I have gone through some of the same agonies over the years. When I joined UPA as an interaction designer there was a question as to whether interaction design was actually usability. The reason that this came up was that many of the people (at that time) were involved in assessing usability rather than designing for it.
Later, when I was on the UPA Board, I was "VP of Outreach" and needed to grapple with the question of whether usability was just about software and digital devices or included other environments (or were these the sole province of ergonomic)? For what it's worth, here is where I ended up in my thinking: 1. Go for the broadest definitions possible. You never know how the field will evolve. 2. Recognize that the positioning of an association is different from the positioning of an individual. What I mean by this is that professionally I have some strong ideas about what design is and how the profession should operate. I will advocate for these positions on my website, blogs and in publications. However, what an association like IxDA should do is different. Associations represent a diversity of people and views and have to be careful not to limit their scope and become exclusionary since that would limit the growth of the profession. This becomes especially tricky when the association wants to set itself up as an agent of quality assurance through licensing, certification, ethics or even in providing training. Charlie . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Posted from the new ixda.org http://www.ixda.org/discuss?post=24685 ________________________________________________________________ *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
