"Do you see IA as a necessary intermediate step? Or is it starting out on a parallel (and to me, less interesting-sounding) path?"
No. I don't think there is a yellow brick road to IxD that requires IA as an intermediate step - but I do know that a rather large portion of the people on this list have at times been IAs - or been required to produce IA type deliverables like basic user research and personas, site maps, wireframes, prototypes, task flows, design specifications, and visual design comps. At the end of the day, we are practitioners, and many times the product or our efforts are deliverables that have a lot of overlap with what might be considered large portions of IA type work (for instance - we may not actually do a content inventory, or develop a taxonomy - but if those artifacts don't exist - we will have a very hard time indeed - so someone must do them). We also may not create personas - but someone is going to need to do them if we want to even think we are designing something based on real users (fundamental to UCD), and not just making stuff up (designer centered design? stakeholder centered design, anyone?). So back to the point - we are all about the practice of the craft of IxD - and that means, naturally - practice - and a craft is nothing if you aren't creating deliverable [plug - check out Dan Brown's book "Communication Design" for a great exegesis, background, and damn well written volume about all the types of deliberables that can go into meaningful and well done user centered design], then what are we doing? If a silver smith is simply reading about silver theory and lecturing on silver aesthetics - then he isn't pounding out stuff made from silver - is he! So anyway - reading about what we do is good - but secondary to the act, process, work of producing stuff - like flows, wireframes, designs, interactive prototypes, paper prototypes - whatever it is. On Feb 12, 2008 8:11 AM, Martin Polley <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Hi Will, > > <snip> > > > I think there is actually a gentle path from Technical Writer » > > Information Architect » IxD because I see it as a journey from structured > > content to structuring content (organization, flow), to flow and behavior > > (creating the dialogue between people and system, people and people, people > > and environment). > > </snip> > > Do you see IA as a necessary intermediate step? Or is it starting out on a > parallel (and to me, less interesting-sounding) path? > > <snip> > > > I agree that you don't need a fancy degree - but taking a few HCI and > > interaction design classes would certainly help in the "Why" and "How" but > > if you do it on your own - start with the What. Decide on something you want > > to design for yourself, a blog, personal site, whatever - spend alot of time > > on well designed sites (web might be the easiest medium to start with), and > > COPY. That's right - just find some well designed sites - like Boxes and > > Arrows - and plagiarize (for yourself - don't actually post someone else's > > design as your own) - the more you design like that - it will be like muscle > > memory - and eventually you will be creating your own things. > > </snip> > > That makes a lot of sense. Learning by doing. But this is more relevant > for developing IA and visual/aesthetic skills, right? (Which brings me back > to my previous question about whether IA is a necessary step.) And it also > leads into another question -- which are the most important skills that I > should be trying to develop? And out of these, which are the most important; > what should I start with? > > Thanks very much, > > -- > Martin Polley > Technical Communicator > +972 52 3864280 > <http://capcloud.com/> > -- ~ will "No matter how beautiful, no matter how cool your interface, it would be better if there were less of it." Alan Cooper - "Where you innovate, how you innovate, and what you innovate are design problems" ------------------------------------------------------- will evans user experience architect [EMAIL PROTECTED] ------------------------------------------------------- ________________________________________________________________ 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
