> Christina, I think you are over simplifying here. > If there is anything I have learned this election season is > that frames, rhetoric, semantics, and titles mean EVERYTHING. > They set up the mental models from which we construct our > world view, and they create our own self-identity from which >we juxtapose ourselves against that world and the other people in it.
As Jim gracefully pointed out, we can all be right here. Titles sometimes matter and sometimes they don't. I look at Dick Chaney as someone who influenced this country more than many Presidents with the one of the most well known impotent job titles in the world: Vice President of the U.S. A title may matter is some situations, but I think how much power you have matters much more and you can have great power with a weak job title, and vice versa. If the title helps obtain power, great, but otherwise... > 1) Why is the only way up, out? Why can't we do what Luke Wroblewski and others > at Yahoo have done and go the route of the Design Principal, the non-management role? I don't think anyone said it's one or the other. If the problem we're trying to solve is greater influence or impact, then finding a more powerful place in a corporate hierarchy makes basic sense. We'd have to ask Luke how much power and influence he feels he has. Like I mentioned to Jim, when the pressure is on, in most companies it's the General manager of a product or website that gets to make the call, not the VP of design, not the Creative director. Jim pointed out he is, or has been an exception. The question then is how to learn from those exceptions. > 2) "Design" is not just part of a title, it is philosophically a > different way of thinking about problem analysis and solving. Having > your title reframed to suit corporate culture may be short term effective, > but long term you may not be sought after for that difference. > Historically, (yes, I'm about to sound paranoid) this has been the > chief way to assimilate and acculturate groups of people into the larger cultural mindset. I think this is bogus. If you kick ass at your job and get great products out the door you will always be of great interest to the 85% (my made up number) of the world that fails at one or both of those goals. It wont matter what you call yourself if you are successful: people will be interested regardless. For someone with the D word in their job title to spout on about design is predictable. For a VP of engineering or Marketing to say "Our secret is design and they deserve all the power we can give them" is something way more powerful. > I'm a very politically minded individual and I believe that > design is more than a tool for problem solving to be honest, > but actually is a core professionalization for non-linear thinking. > In a world where linear analytical thought is taught to our young > ones at younger and younger ages, destroying their creativity, > I for one want to keep every last bit of it in all symbols. I bet we agree on the goal, but as someone who has taught creative thinking, you're framework here is way more complicated than it needs to be. Why not simply be an advocate for creative thinking? Or teaching problem solving skills? If that's at the core of how you want to change the world, you'd have more allies and more people who understand what you want to achieve if you just say you are an advocate for teaching creative thinking & problem solving skills. There's a bunch of groups that run national programs with this goal, and never use the word design: http://www.scottberkun.com/blog/2008/teaching-kids-creative-thinking/ -Scott Scott Berkun www.scottberkun.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
