On Feb 18, 2009, at 1:37 PM, Andrei Herasimchuk wrote:
On Feb 18, 2009, at 8:53 AM, Christopher Fahey wrote:
The difference you describe exists today, but it didn't exist ten
or twenty years ago. We can hardly blame folks in the 1980's and
earlier for blurring engineering and user experience design, as
they were doing both. Thomas Edison thought a lot about user
experience when he was engineering the fountain pen and the stock
ticker, but obviously he was focused on the engineering. Even the
people who created all those classic Atari 2600 computer games --
the gameplay, the graphics, the sounds -- were almost without
exception engineers... yet it's hard to argue today that their
primary contribution to the universe was in engineering.
To be clear, I wasn't looking for blame in this sense. Further, I
think you're taking it a bit too far and making the same mistake
that plagued the "user experience" crowd in the late 90s and early
00s. The "it's all user experience, even if they didn't know it!"
I don't think I suggested that it was "all user experience". I said
"they were doing both." My twist, I suppose, is that when solving UX
challenges the great creators of the 80's and earlier were often going
beyond what their engineering training and responsibilities would
usually require of them.
I just wanted to make sure folks were looking for the right people,
which in the past context means they are almost always looking for
engineers.
Again, I think that was the point I was making. -- that we should
realize that great user experience innovations have come from
engineers. Sorry if it seemed otherwise, or if you mistook someone
else's comments as mine.
Cheers,
-Cf
Christopher Fahey
____________________________
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biz: http://www.behaviordesign.com
me: http://www.graphpaper.com
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