Re: [IxDA Discuss] Differnce between user interface and interactiondesign?
On 27/01/2008, Troy Gardner [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: To be contrarian, I routinely work with UI designers who take wireframes (from an IA/IxD) and convert them to high fidelity comps (primarily in photoshop but sometimes in illustrator). That's not UI design - that's visual or graphic design. User interface design is the designing of the interface which is what you do when you do wireframes (in part collaboration with your designers I presume). Most people equate design to visual design so I can see why you use that label - elsewhere it's not the same - the UI designer creates the wireframes. But then I've never had any labeled UI designer working on any project I've worked on. Interactive designers I've worked with and are, as someone pointed out, often design and build guys who do flash stuff, mostly at the microsite end of things in the UK new media market. -- Stewart Dean *Come to IxDA Interaction08 | Savannah* February 8-10, 2008 in Savannah, GA, USA Register today: http://interaction08.ixda.org/ 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
Re: [IxDA Discuss] Differnce between user interface and interactiondesign?
Yams and sweet potatoes do taste different and a real chef will cringe at the thought of using one over the other. ;) BTW, I do like that ... Isn't that just a visual designer? ... Well yes, it is. It's a visual designer who is expert in interfaces, as opposed to a visual designer who is expert in print, or graphics, or iconography or packaging, or or or. In the end, I agree with Jared in that this aspect of the discussion is not meaningful. Where it becomes more meaningful is not in the comparisons with other practices, or with aspects of the same practice. Where it becomes meaningful is in the long-term strategic building of a community of practice around a growing discipline which cuts across many practices. I.E. UI Designers would not do button layouts for a cellphone, but an industrial designer with the aid of an interaction designer. I've never seen a UI Designer in a 3D studio before, except to help with the software that goes on embedded devices, not the devices themselves and even then, b/c the same position usually has to do the work on the devices themselves, the IxD does double duty. But my main point here is that people tend to fixate on their experience and their current practices, as opposed to seeing a much wider and holistic vision for a growing discipline. Interaction Design has the most to offer the widest range of formative design disciplines when we think of its gravitational center as being around behavior and interaction among people, devices and services. Glomming on form based pieces of the practice, or making IxD synonymous with those form based pieces, degrades the specificity of interaction design. Why is this important? Because as of yet, we have not paid attention to a true academic understanding of what actually interaction is from a design perspective. This work is constantly put on hold by practitioners who get caught up in the work, or gets subsumed by non-designer disciplines who don't understand the contextual need for a design-centric approach to defining the discipline. Our language for evaluation has been completely dictated by HCI and Usability. Because of this, I get called into other people's agencies all the time with the question, How can I get my IxD group to be treated as a strategic and creative part of the organization parallel to visual design or industrial design? Since we do have an aesthetic based foundation that we can communicate with amongst each other or among other design peers, the language we do use, leaves us in the realm of those from a science-centric perspective, which is more closely aligned with engineering. How many people who work as innies (inside the corporate sphere) for a technology company have their UX groups being managed by engineering? Almost every group I've been in for the last 8 years dotted lines through the SVP of Product Development. Now this isn't about being the C. Usually on this path it is through Product Management (though sometimes directly through development). Is this really where a design discipline can best be managed? It is just meant as an example, not meant to be a complete and comprehensive survey. So yes, there are many places where UI Design and Interaction Design are the same practice. There are other places where interaction design and formative design are separated from each in bad ways (non-collaborative) and good ways (partnered). Those environments are so varied and distributed that we will never come to agreement. But the fact that the yams and the sweet potatoes ARE separated by some, says that the separation can be meaningful in those organizations, ergo if it can be separated, it can be defined. BTW, I'm really liking the analogy that a UI Designer is to pixels, what Print Designer is to ink. Both are visual designers. But yes, many do a lot more, ie. interaction design typesetting, etc. -- dave . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Posted from the new ixda.org http://www.ixda.org/discuss?post=25077 *Come to IxDA Interaction08 | Savannah* February 8-10, 2008 in Savannah, GA, USA Register today: http://interaction08.ixda.org/ 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
Re: [IxDA Discuss] Myers Briggs, DISC, Personality of UX Folk
Hi All, This is not necessarily my forum, as I'm not involved in this particular industry, but I'm a work/life coach who's used MBTI very successfully for many, many years, and I wanted to contribute to the discussion, since the thread came across my desktop. I'm always amazed at the vitriol that is frequently heaped up on MBTI. I find so much of it coming from a poorly informed perspective, from people who don't fully understand the instrument and the thinking behind it or have taken it in a way that cannot support their best needs. When administered under appropriate circumstances and verified and interpreted by a qualified professional %u2013 which is the way it was always meant to be %u2013 MBTI can be a truly eye-opening experience, a real revelation in terms of understanding yourself and others. The fact that it has for decades been %u2013 and still remains - the gold standard in personality self-assessment testifies to that. So why the complaints? One of the reasons, I believe, has to do with the fact that MBTI was never meant to be taken in the way so many people do it nowadays - online, with quick, cut-and-dry personality descriptions and without the supporting services of a qualified MBTI counsellor. MBTI is a self-reporting instrument, and psychology fully recognizes the personal bias that can creep into these. That's where work with a qualified professional becomes extremely important - to help you verify your type, identify your best-fit type, and make the results relevant to your particular situation. And I'm not even talking about the proliferation of fakes - assessments that claim to be MBTI but, in fact, aren't. There is only one place that I would recommend for taking the assessment online, and it%u2019s at www.mbticomplete.com. (No, I don%u2019t get commissions from them.) This is administered by the actual MBTI people, who know what they are doing and are applying all the latest research to the tool and its interpretation. It will cost you $59.95, but you%u2019ll get the real thing, and you%u2019ll actually be taken through the explanation of what each reported preference means in real life, as well as through the type verification process. Even then, I don%u2019t believe it%u2019s a substitute for one-on-one work with a counselor. Another problem arises when the results are used in a less than appropriate manner. To use MBTI to determine an individual%u2019s suitability for a job or ability to perform is absolutely unacceptable, and the ethical rules for MBTI administrators are unequivocal on that. There are so many factors that determine one's success on the job that you just can't rely on a simple personality assessment of any kind. Finally, I%u2019d like to correct one of the posters above, who said that MBTI was about identifying personality traits. MBTI does not actually measure personality traits, nor does it predict behavior. The only thing it identifies is very broad patterns in which we collect information about the world around us and the way we make decisions on that information. The actual composition of traits of within those patterns (i.e., kind, aggressive, compassionate, domineering, etc.) is, of course, unpredictable and completely unique to every individual in question. What MBTI is, is an excellent tool (one of many), which, when used properly, can help us gain a better understanding of who we are. Once we have that understanding, we are empowered to make more informed choices about how we want to be in the world, rather than simply responding to circumstances in a conditioned, poorly-informed way. It is about helping us to best use our unique gifts to benefit ourselves and those around us. That%u2019s all there is to it. I hope this was helpful in some way. Best wishes to all. Izabella Tabarovsky www.projectcreativevision.com . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Posted from the new ixda.org http://gamma.ixda.org/discuss?post=25081 *Come to IxDA Interaction08 | Savannah* February 8-10, 2008 in Savannah, GA, USA Register today: http://interaction08.ixda.org/ 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
Re: [IxDA Discuss] Why do crappy interfaces sell?
On Jan 22, 2008, at 11:23 AM, Bruno Figueiredo wrote: My question is: why do people keep buying products with crappy interfaces? I guess that since most products ship with poor interfaces, people have very low expectations. But these kind of products have been around for what? 15 years? They should know better by now. Why do people keep giving incentives to companies who deliver poor products? How quickly can you identify a crappy interface? More to the point, how quickly can *they* identify one? Barring the *really* bad ones (think consumer art programs circa 1997, where your stomach would turn just by looking at the screenshots), they can't tell from a brochure. They can't tell from a live demo. They may not be able to tell from a 5 minute test drive. Only after a few days of working with it do the bad parts really show themselves as such. And by then, the money is spent, the learning curve has started, and the brakes have already given out on the runaway truck/ People continue to buy products with crappy interfaces because (a) they don't know how to tell the quality quickly, and (b) they assume/ hope that the interface won't actually be crappy. -- Jim Drew [EMAIL PROTECTED] *Come to IxDA Interaction08 | Savannah* February 8-10, 2008 in Savannah, GA, USA Register today: http://interaction08.ixda.org/ 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
[IxDA Discuss] Local leaders dinner @ interaction08
Hi all In the invitation from the IxDA Board to the Local groups Task Force a couple of weeks ago we also invited all active local leaders coming to our conference in Savannah to join us for a dinner on Friday night. So far we're 14 people going. We're planning to have a 3-4hr event to socialize, exchange ideas and to talk about your needs and the things to come. Please RSVP to either me and/or Josh (joshseiden(at)yahoo.com) before Wednesday this week. All the best! .Niklas -- Niklas Wolkert Director, IxDA Local leader, IxDA Sweden http://ixda.org Sr. Interaction Designer Ergonomidesign http://ergonomidesign.com +46 (0)733 611 227 *Come to IxDA Interaction08 | Savannah* February 8-10, 2008 in Savannah, GA, USA Register today: http://interaction08.ixda.org/ 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
Re: [IxDA Discuss] Myers Briggs, DISC, Personality of UX Folk
We agree about the dangers of self-assessment, but having others measure is just as prone to making other mistakes, in particular the context of testing may/or may not translate into other contexts (work, love, play, family). Having developed personalty tests, I don't think that any 4 letter metrics, is sufficiently detailed to describe anything but gross behavior, but it's still quite powerful for 70% accurate. To use MBTI to determine an individual%u2019s suitability for a job or ability to perform is absolutely unacceptable, While I agree it cannot be used solely, in conjunction with IQ, EQ + SocialQ it can be used to determine how long a person will be happy in any given position for a long duration. Of course if that's long enough ...then you're right anything goes. There is a good deal of research indicating the attraction of types to careers. nor does it predict behavior. This doesn't match my experience, else people wouldn't be using it to 'please understand me' ;). While this may not generalize to all types, most of my friends are predominately *NT*'s and despite coming from all over the place, show remarkably similar approaches to handling problems, communicating and worldviews, that are distinctly different from non NT's. *Come to IxDA Interaction08 | Savannah* February 8-10, 2008 in Savannah, GA, USA Register today: http://interaction08.ixda.org/ 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
Re: [IxDA Discuss] Myers Briggs, DISC, Personality of UX Folk
I find that the MBTI does predict one's approach to problem solving and interaction with others. Or rather, the MBTI codifies behaviors and perspectives that we generally expect from an individual. -m On Jan 28, 2008 7:33 AM, Troy Gardner [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: nor does it predict behavior. This doesn't match my experience, else people wouldn't be using it to 'please understand me' ;). While this may not generalize to all types, most of my friends are predominately *NT*'s and despite coming from all over the place, show remarkably similar approaches to handling problems, communicating and worldviews, that are distinctly different from non NT's. *Come to IxDA Interaction08 | Savannah* February 8-10, 2008 in Savannah, GA, USA Register today: http://interaction08.ixda.org/ 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
