Andrei Herasimchuk wrote: > Don't mistake the practical constraints of having designers focus on > the design so others do the prototyping from not having to have the > skills to do so in the first place.
I believe that having the skills to create the prototype, in whatever form it may take, will make you a better Interaction Designer than you would be without those skills. I certainly consider them to be critical to my own success. However, I don't believe the lack of those skills necessarily results in a poor IxDer. Nor do I believe that lack of those skills relegates someone to being a less talented IxDer than one with those skills. > How do you go about designing those things on a lawnmower? Or at > least the "interaction" of those things? I ask because I honestly > couldn't tell you! Ask me how to design a painting tool with a Wacom > input device using a tablet computing system with a wireless > connection, and I could design you a tool that if it had the right > pixel processing engine under it could allow an artist to sit in the > park and paint like they they might with a real canvas and set of > paints. > > How would I design the safety features on a lawnmower? Nope... you > got me. I have absolutely *no* idea. I wouldn't even know where to > begin with any confidence. I've worked with customers in several different industries. Each time I started, I didn't know the domain. I didn't know how to design the safety features on the lawnmower. My design process, however, gave me a confident starting point. I learned about the workers, their problems, their tasks, etc. and was able to design solutions that helped them. > Part of picking a career as either a graphic designer or an > industrial designer is because one wants to design the things those > fields specialize in. How does someone go to college and pick a > degree in designing anything as long as it has a "behavioral" > component. Doesn't *everything* have that? And if so, what exactly > does it mean? This reminds me of a story that Dan Boyarski, currently chair of the School of Design at CMU, told us about a young girl who when asked what she wanted to be when she grew up said, "I want to be a designer of everything!" Unrealistic? Yes, most likely. But what I was taught there prepared me for more than just designing computer software. I only had one semester-long course on "interface design". That's not to say that I wasn't doing interface design in other courses, but that was the only one that declared it as the true focus of the course. If you learn design processes and how to apply them to problems, that gets you a long way towards "designing everything as long as it has a "behavioral" component." > Personally, I think there's plenty to do with digital and software. > Does that mean I think working on power tools is inferior? No. I just > think it's different, and different enough to be something else. So you would rather that we be the Software Interaction Design Association or Digital Interaction Design Association. I'd prefer we remain more inclusive than that. What's to keep someone else from saying that designing software for mobile phones is different— different enough to be something else? > So how would the IxDA support the two people, practically speaking? > The breadth and depth of the various design problems in those two > examples are rather significant. I can see how an organization could > support any type of designer, speaking academically or from a more > theoretical vantage point. But when it comes down to providing > content, training, education, career paths, conferences, > certifications... How would the IxDA or any organization handle such > a diverse membership? I guess we're just going to disagree. I don't see it as being any different. Again, to reference my alma mater, at CMU, the Communication Designers and Industrial Designers start off taking the same foundation courses. Eventually they decide which area they want to focus on and take domain specific courses, but the organization, the School of Design, supports them both. Jack Jack L. Moffett Interaction Designer inmedius 412.459.0310 x219 http://www.inmedius.com My goal is to build elegant products. The products that don't make people think when they should be doing, make people think when they should be learning, compel them by relating to them, and simply work. - Robert Hoekman, Jr. ________________________________________________________________ *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
