Point taken, Mark. And perhaps "simplification/oversimplification" wasn't the term I should've used, either. I think I was maybe reaching for something more like "loaded terminology."
Putting words in the mouths of stereotypical proponents, etc.. Reducing the complex set of reasons why sometimes one (or a smaller team's) vision is pursued or employed as "egocentric," (as opposed, to perhaps the best interest of the product and the end users), etc.. I also wish you could be in Savannah. I'm looking forward to meeting lots of IxDA'ers and having many interesting discussions. I suppose this topic and thread is as good as any to say (in the context of roles), that I see another topic of debate coming: And that is the whole issue of moving up in organizations and evolving as a designer means that necessarily one must "move into management." There are some threads and discussions around this idea at Boxes and Arrows, and I've discussed it in the past with Information Architects. I'm in a corporation, and a fast-growing one, and that and my other corporate design experiences have not indicated that it's entirely necessary to follow one model of evolution as one becomes more experienced. Yes, design leadership roles definitely include more strategic and higher-level issues, but that does not necessarily preclude having a model where the chief design executive is not also a kind of traditional studio master. I advocate a studio model for corporate designers. I believe the hierarchical model inherent in many, if not most, corporations is not the only (nor necessarily the best) model for designers, creativity, or innovation. The idea that designers gain experience, and at some point *must* leave actually doing the design in order to rise in the corporate structure, or effectively attend to management, strategic, or leadership roles and duties, is in my opinion and experience, another unproven assumption. I suppose some of my own personal perspective on this comes from being a generalist. My own work from early on always had a great deal of strategy and higher-level architecture and business associated with the production-level design work. And integrating those in a seamless whole is a blend of skills that I only learned by being mentored by older, more experienced master designers (who themselves had never stopped designing). It's this side-by-side Master-Protege model that I believe is missing from the majority of corporate design efforts. Not that all corporate design models need to be configured this way, but more the idea that such a model is *not possible* (as has been implied in a number of threads I've read on "ascending into management" elsewhere). I believe that we're going to see a wide range of models of what it means to evolve in one's design career in the coming years. I just don't want young designers, particulary those that *love* designing so much that they could never dream of not always doing it, or at least being the lead (while also embracing and tackling much higher-level design, vision, and leadership responsibilities). My message is that you don't have to. There are alternative models. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Posted from the new ixda.org http://www.ixda.org/discuss?post=24799 ________________________________________________________________ *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
