On Jun 20, 2008, at 2:47 PM, Andrew Boyd wrote:
Now... if you want to be immersed in a challenging environment where your every assumption has to be justified to your clients, your boss, other business areas that have different agendas, your boss's boss, and their boss's boss (the head of an organisation that employs several thousand people), then we can talk :)
No argument here, I'm doing that right now at Cisco :-) And did it at Oracle, Adobe, Involution, etc. Totally agree that justifying assumptions to clients or product folks is challenging and serves as a powerful crucible where designers truly earn their stars, forced to mature and become stronger, better amid the fires of practice.
But it's important to realize that "arguing to defend or counter features/use cases/usability" is a bit different than "arguing to understand and become deeply knowledgeable" about a body of theory (ie, ideas, concepts, perspectives) which becomes part of your intellectual repertoire that you can draw upon as situations arise in the course of your career. There's a certain learning of how to think critically, interpret ideas, basically mental tools for reflection and analysis, etc. Which all becomes a formidable foundation to enter or re-enter the world of practice (engaging those PM's and engineers, etc.) with fresh eyes, rejuvenated mind, and newly discovered skills/ tools. (circling back to my opinion of the high value of master's degree...)
Just wanted to clarify that point :-) -uday ________________________________________________________________ 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
