If Monday's article has in fact been responsible for sparking a timely conversation in the IxD community, I'm happy to help, and honored to have had it taken so seriously by such a thoughtful group of creative professionals. To be honest though, it was written out of something more like self-interest: Coroflot is a creative employment website above all else, and getting information out to designers and employers that's going to improve their ability to connect, and develop their careers, is our bread and butter.
I get asked frequently by working designers and design students about the specifics of the IxD field, and with good reason: it's a rapidly growing branch of design whose relevance to real world problems increases constantly. It comes across as a great field to be working in, both in terms of how interesting the work is, and how needed it is. And the frustration that led to the article mostly arises from not being able to answer these questions in a satisfying way. It may be true that this is a PR problem rather than a definition problem, but regardless of the reason, hardly anyone outside the IxD field (in my experience) seems to know what exactly you guys do all day. Not in an overarching, theoretical sense, but in a specific, rubber-on-the-road sense. And contrary to some arguments I've heard, I don't think this is true of every other creative discipline. Most of my direct experience is in Industrial Design, and yeah, there's all sorts of back-and-forth about What Exactly Is Industrial Design? -- check out the boards at Core77 for an endless array of examples. But when a student pipes up and asks "I want to get a job in ID, what do I need to learn and what will I be doing all day?" there are a few solid answers: you need to know how to sketch, you should probably learn a CAD package or two, you should study manufacturing methods, you need to know about materials, you need to learn some user research skills, etc. There's a clear agreement on what traits a good portfolio needs, and there are archetypal examples of the ID process. The actual skill set used by any individual working designer may differ from this dramatically, of course, and there are plenty of ID pros who don't sketch, model or specify materials at all. But the existence of this diversity doesn't impede the enumeration of a core set of techniques that can be used as a starting point, much as the commenter I quoted remarked about web design having HTML and CSS as a core, from which one can extend into specialized skills. It's also entirely possible that 10 years on, sketching with a pencil and coding HTML with both be obsolete -- that doesn't mean we can't use them as a core skill set *now*. The level of discourse and soul-searching within the IxD community is incredibly high, and its theoretical tenets get debated with a precision rarely seen in ID, but that discourse rarely seems to extend beyond the realm of theory, at least in the view of the outside observer. What I haven't seen is a similarly precise discussion of what you need to be able to do in order to be good in this field. Words like "define," "discuss," and "understand" are not precise enough. Most of the theoretical definitions of the IxD field that I've seen so far could apply to nearly any design discipline without much alteration. Architects "define complex dialogues" too. Industrial designers "define how products and services work" as well. Now, none of this should be construed for a second as proposing that Interaction Designers aren't doing valuable work, because they undeniably are. But the degree to which the work they do crosses over with other, better-defined disciplines leaves a lot of us wondering two things: What do Interaction Designers do that nobody else does? And what don't Interaction Designers do, that other designers do? I'm eager to continue this dialogue, because, well, having better answers to these questions would make my job a lot easier. So please feel free to drop me a line (alviani -at- coroflot -dot- com), or continue the discussion here or in the comments on the original article on Creative Seeds. I guarantee I will be paying attention. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Posted from the new ixda.org http://www.ixda.org/discuss?post=40375 ________________________________________________________________ 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
