On Aug 21, 2009, at 6:22 PM, Nick Gould wrote:
Seems that, given your professional impermeability relating to this issue, you could just leave well enough alone; give your opinion when asked but otherwise respect the right of others to run their businesses as they see fit. Anyway...
Nick, I don't have a problem with someone running their business as they see fit as long as it doesn't impact the field I work in. And herein lies the crux of the problem with your statement.
You see, as a designer and UX professional, I'm part consultant and part educator to my clients and this field. As a consultant, my role is to provide services to my client that have a measurable impact on their business. As an educator, my duty is to educate them ethically about what our field provides.
Why is honesty, integrity, and ethics so hard to come by? Perhaps the shiny color of that gold coin is more inviting that the value of doing real and meaningful work.
I take pride in my field, my work, the service this field can provide to the world, what we can contribute, and the legacy we can leave behind. This is why I personally take issue with things like this. Eyetracking doesn't really provide any value other than to show some fancy visualization heat maps on screen. That's all it does.
Yeah, it's impressive to see those heat maps. I love looking at them. But that's the only true value—visual aesthetics. It doesn't really tell you anything about why anyone does anything. Making that inference is a HUGE unsubstantiated leap. The claims I typically see made through ET in my view are unethical and unsupportable.
Instead of trying to find a solution that ET solves, which to date and in 15 years in this field, I've not seen one, we should be focusing our efforts on existing research methods, or developing new ones, that actually do provide value, provide quality data, and from which we can make reliable inferences with integrity.
When I've pressed ET advocates on the reliability of the data they produce and the reliability of the inferences they're making based solely on ET data, they buckle like a house of cards. Call a spade a spade. It's about as scientifically valid as snake oil.
Cheers! Todd Zaki Warfel Principal Design Researcher Messagefirst | Designing Information. Beautifully. ---------------------------------- Contact Info Voice: (215) 825-7423 Email: t...@messagefirst.com AIM: twar...@mac.com Blog: http://toddwarfel.com Twitter: zakiwarfel ---------------------------------- In theory, theory and practice are the same. In practice, they are not. ________________________________________________________________ Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ....... disc...@ixda.org Unsubscribe ................ http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines ............ http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .................. http://www.ixda.org/help
