It's unfair to expect junior designers, coming straight out of school (or maybe never having gone to design school at all) to be at this level. Does that mean they're not interested? No. But they need the chance to grow. This is the same for almost all disciplines of design (or any other profession with a rich and diverse history), this is not a problem (is it even a problem?) unique to IxD.
Instead of pointing fingers and bickering, shouldn't we be focussing on how to impart this knowledge and passion on the next group of designers just getting started now? New grads are often nieve, and take time to adjust to not being the smartest person in the room. Let's give them what they need to move out of that phase without getting angry or condescending about it. As for the IxD community as a whole not knowing it's history and adjacent history, I just think that's wrong. As Dave pointed out, the Interaction conference has always been cross-disciplinary (trans-disciplinary?). We speak a lot about architecture, industrial design, design theory, foundation, etc. The more experienced designers among us have done extensive learning in other fields and bring all of that together in their practice, and teaching/mentoring. For us younger practitioners, we're just waking up to the possibilities offered by the multitudes of design disciplines out there and are eager to absorb as much as we can. There will always be people who live in a bubble and are not interested in learning at this level. That's okay, but it's not everybody.. certainly not everybody in this amazing and diverse community. Matt. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Posted from the new ixda.org http://www.ixda.org/discuss?post=47932 ________________________________________________________________ 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
