The idea I'd brought up at our IxDA Board meeting was to begin an IxD Timeline that specifically wouldn't lead to the type of arguments our community has traditionally wallowed in.
The idea was to create a very open project, where individuals could add elements to the timeline representing a wide range of criteria (examples: careers, groups, projects, ideas, essays, books, etc.) - all things that occurred at points or periods in time. Each entry could have links to project case studies or groups or whatever constituted supporting material, information, and media. Each addition could have a variety of attributes attached to/associated with it. Types, categories, domains, styles of approach, people/designers associated with, etc. (also open to addition by all contributors - could be simple tagging or include or extend to other means of attribute association). These would be helpful in later being able to analyze and visualize the accumulating data in interesting ways. One of the key reasons this would be valuable for our community is that it would allow a rich accumulation of data points representing people, projects, events, and relationships that comprise our field. It's an accumulation much more an agreed-upon consensus. This type of initiative would be different from the "who are the most" style questions that we often discuss here. This would be a comprehensive, ever-growing map of as much as could be added. It's not a replacement, but rather an alternative way of accumulating rich data we can use as a valuable resource going forward. I've spoken with some of our overlapping friends from the Information Architecture field about this, and there is some interest in pursuing this. The idea is to design it to be very open and easy for people to add to. There will likely need to be some administration, but the spirit should definitely be to foster openess and participation towards building a very large and comprehensive IxD Timeline (time is just one organizing attribute here, of course, but is key to the historical aspect of the initiative). I'm pretty excited about it, because I think we'll all be surprised at the richness of such a database once it begins to accumulate. I would be particularly interested in seeing the entries going back decades, where much occurred that's not widely known, or readily recallable in the context of our field's history and multiple threads of careers, work, and relationships. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Posted from the new ixda.org http://www.ixda.org/discuss?post=38833 ________________________________________________________________ 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
