Yes, Patrick there is a lot of "it depends" and YMMV to the reality of all this.
But if ActionScript and "pixel perfect" design is beyond you. Please move to strategy and management. Please! The economies of scale require that there is a UI Designer. ONE person. The age of having an IxD, a Visual Design, and a GUI coder as 3 separate roles is fading. If anything one might say that it was a nice experiment by the IA/UX community to create the false need for such an experiment. The one split that has always made sense to me is that of research & evaluation. BUT! that is the one hanger-on that I hear many IxDs, IAs, etc. want to keep. I'm not saying don't be a part of the process. Hell, we all know that the more stakeholders involved in research the better. What I'm saying is don't own it. But back to the more important issue. When I hear Patrick say that actionscript (really? actionscript) or pixel-perfect design is beyond him. I at the same time concur and get scared. For myself really. I'm very much like Patrick. BUT! my access to these amazing students have me feeling OLD. Their energy and easy at which they accumulate knowledge and skills is so inspiring and intimidating. I had 1 student this past quarter learn drag & drop in actionscript for a 1 week prototype in a day or two having never used Flash before this class. When it comes to pixels, script, batteries, screens, snap domes, plastics, databases, frameworks, OSes, etc. it is about material. It is like an ID who has to understand material science to some degree to even be in conversation with mechanical engineers. You have to know the material that people are going to be interacting with, how to forge it to what you need it to be AND to your point about communication, you need to be able to create your own apearance models. NOT b/c you have to do them in the real world, but having the craft mastered is a process of well mastering the craft of your medium, so when you communicate within it, or to others who have to understand it, you do so with unparalleled command. In the IxDA panel that Jared Spool led. Jared asked where the next 5k (or was it 10k?) IxDs were going to come from. I say they are mostly already here. They are industrial designers who are already so used to dealing in human situated solutions around eco-systems of activity. They don't know Norman per se, but reading a few books is the easy part. They already know how to think within multiple dimensions (all 4 of them) and they know how to do it as a means of completing a narrative. Of course, there are many that don't get it. But there are many more that do. I give it 5-10 years and I predict a major shift in interaction design practice & education away from majors and masters and into support tracks and electives for already existing degrees in interactive, industrial, and architecture. -- dave . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Posted from the new ixda.org http://www.ixda.org/discuss?post=39701 ________________________________________________________________ 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
