Andrei said. "We won't truly agree on much of the larger picture until you change your stance that "interaction" designers need not understand fully the fundamentals of graphic design as part of the job description. That means the fundamentals of good typography, color theory and application, composition, the grid, layout, etc. I'll let you off the hook in bringing up basic markup and scripting skills for now."
To create compelling interfaces everything you said is TRUE. All those skills are required. Where we disagree is that all of them need to be in a single human being and that their conglomeration is equal to the discipline of interaction design. I.e. in my industrial design shop I will never be an expert in 3D form, though the form and even 3D behavior of the objects designed in the studio are important to the overall interfacing between human and product and well that product as a mediator between the human and the underlying software embedded in that 3D form. I'm also not an iconography so the labeling on keypads is best done by someone else. But I do step in for the layout and feel of the interface as it impacts HF and cognitive aspects. I think it is off to say that the practitioner needs to do everything. Now, back to education. Any interaction design program (bachelor's or masters) should require the same design fundamentals that any industrial designer or architect would go through. I'm sure this covers issues of line and color, but usually doesn't include issues of layout and type (graphic design). I think your assumption that "graphic design" is always in the domain of the interaction designer is a false one. But if an IxD knows they will be working in 2D systems as their primary canvas than sure, they should learn as much about 2D communication design as is required to communicate the behavior of the interfaces they are designing. I don't expect them to master 2D communication design any more than I would expect them to master 3D product design. Now another way to look at the education piece, is that you could say that Interaction Design is a specialty on top of 2D or 3D design education like surgery on top of cardiology or surgery on top of neurology. Its surgery with a ton of similarities between them regardless of anatomy, but within specific anatomy areas, it requires very different craft skills. -- dave -- David Malouf http://synapticburn.com/ http://ixda.org/ http://motorola.com/ ________________________________________________________________ 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
