I have been arriving at a problematic sentiment that "discipline" based "community of practice" is not practical.
It really sounds like to me that CoP really needs to be focused on medium, which may speak to Janna's topic. Maybe there needs to be topics about practice IN X medium or Y Medium. Separating on "discipline" (IA or IxD) doesn't make sense given the lack of consensus within the community about what these things even are. I'd also like to step back from the comment that Jorge called me on. (Thanx Jorge). Its not that I don't care about IA, but there are strong elements of my work where the solutions within the organization of the information I'm presenting have patterns and solution that are so well understood compared to the behavioral problems that I'm working on. I think that actually is a compliment to the level of maturity that much of information architecture has achieved within its core. I'm not sure that IxD could say the same thing. The point of this thread started challenging the concept that IA is focused on the Web brought on by Dan. 1) If the Polar Bear & Blue Prints & Elements are the totems of IA, can we not agree that the roots of IA? Its amazing to me that Info Anxiety never comes up in the IA community which for me is so much more historically definitional about the IA I practice than either book. (Going back to GvP's post comparing "Findability" to "Wurman" IA practices, which I hated btw.). So if these are the totems, then we have to agree that IA practice historically is rooted in the Web. It is the quintessential transition of Library Science into an interactive discipline. And to be honest, I never understood the dif bet. E & W coast IA. It all seemed pretty similar and the content of BP vs. PB (BluePrints vs. PolarBear) from the stand point of theory is REALLY similar. 2) I think a similar thing has happened in IxD. There is the "Cooper" practice of IxD that is so rooted in what I would call "The Valley" practice of IxD. It's focus has been on software, and its methods directly related to the HCI world, which is very scientifically driven. (Clarification: I don't think that Cooper as an agency represents this in any way any longer.) The other side of IxD though is the interaction side of classical design school thinking. It is deconstructive in nature, and treats interaction just like it would visual, space, and form. It is an aesthetic part of the total composition. UX like all of these labels is rhetorical in nature, so you need to look beyond what it could be, and more towards what it is! What is the body of work from folks who identify with this rhetoric? If I look at the contemporary agencies who speak IxD, my take from their body of work is that they are shifting away from "UX" and moving towards "D"esign. Is there really a dichotomy here? Rhetorically, I do think so. Is there room for both in the same community OF COURSE! Is there an umbrella here? maybe? I don't know what it is called, I just know that the rhetoric of UX and its body of work is no longer representative of a growing segment of the work and the overall direction of contemporary Interaction Design. That isn't to say that I can't swing in and define UX in such a way that it can encompass everything that I do. I've seen how people are doing that. But that is not the same as looking at the history of and realities of the work/practice here. All this is to say that there is alignment taking place, that people really don't practice with these separations. So maybe the experiment of an organization soley about a discipline (NOT a practice) when that discipline is not tied to a tangible medium is not practical. Personally, I think Interactions 8 & 9 say otherwise. It tells me that things are great the way they are. Separate but equal in some areas of the world works real well. ;-) -- dave . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Posted from the new ixda.org http://www.ixda.org/discuss?post=40789 ________________________________________________________________ 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
