@Christian, interesting that you mentioned the Target designer lines. That was actually subject of the conversation Saturday and how, regardless of success they helped bring design to the mainstream a little bit more.
@Colleen, I agree wholeheartedly that a background in fields other than design is essential. I have basic development skills and it allows me to speak on level with the developers and to better understand their constraints. I want to push back a little though when you said that having a background in other fields prevents engineers from talking 'down to them'. Both design and engineering (and coding and anything else) are specialties with our own lingo. I spend a lot of my time as a designer communicating to business managers the processes and methods I am using on projects. I could be short non designers and talk down to them but I try to relate terms and methods to processes they might be more familiar with. To this point, I think it is important that engineers and developers understand that they have a specific skill set that not everyone else has. Communication is key and while its helpful for everyone to have a high level understandings of each others fields I think it is more important for the specialist of each field to remember that they are on a project because they have a certain toolbox at their disposal that everyone else doesn't grasp as well. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Posted from the new ixda.org http://www.ixda.org/discuss?post=47176 ________________________________________________________________ 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
