Of course it is. I hate these kind of annoying teaser headlines that the print and broadcast media use to get people to read a news story/watch a program. But here's what I'm getting at:
In the beginning was Interface Design. Then it was argued that it's more than 'just' the 'interface', which regular folk take to mean pretty looking screens -- that it's actually 'Interaction Design'; that we are interested in matters beyond 'merely' the 'interface', and in fact we would like to design the entire interaction process. Further along the way, we became interested in the entire User Experience, and not just the process of interaction. And who knows how much more will be included in the scope of what we claim to be our domain in a few years. The question then is: where do we stop, if we intend to stop at all? In another ongoing thread, I brought up the matter of Action Technologies' Coordinator, which Chauncey Wilson on this forum has tested while at Digital Equipment, back in the 1980's. The Coordinator (sounds a lot like 'The Terminator' doesn't it?) was quickly dubbed 'fascistware' and nearly universally rejected by its users. Weigh in here if you please, Chauncey, since you actually did thorough usability testing on the product -- but even if The Coordinator would have passed the usual gauntlet of usability tests; even if it got two thumbs up on every ease of use measure, it still probably would have failed. Not because it didn't serve any useful purpose, but because, among other things, it attempted to force certain changes in individual and social behavior. So, from the perspective of today's User Experience professional -- where does a UXP's responsibility end? Does a UXP's responsibility today encompass everything that traditionally was the domain of the folks who gathered requirements and wrote the specs. So, for instance, if somebody were to think of embarking on a project like The Coordinator today, would the UXP, even while such a project was being mooted, raise red flags and suitably modify the goals of the project? Since one or more threads right now are devoted to trying to define the field, it might be useful to work from the outside in -- where do we draw the line (if at all we draw a line) and say that anything beyond the line is (mostly) outside the scope of UX? -- murli ________________________________________________________________ *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
