Defining UCD (and other things)

Charlie said:

"Well, if people are interested in collaborating on some of these definitions, I would be happy to try and coordinate."

He also suggested a wiki as the tool of choice, which is a good idea. If IxDA has a Basecamp account, though, it might be prudent to compile a short list of people to include in a BC project, who can use a Writeboard to create these definitions and then toss them out to the list for feedback.

Our definitions should go beyond UCD. Should also include ACD, genius design (likely a recap of Saffer's original definition, which is often misinterpreted or otherwise abused), and other processes/approaches. Perhaps the very act of defining these terms will help IxDA gain more widespread respect from the larger community.

Can the IxDA board please speak up? How might we go about doing this?

-- -Robert Hoekman, Jr.-
CEO / Principal Experience Designer
Miskeeto, LLC — www.miskeeto.com

I just wanted add my plea to the board to get behind this in some way. I would be more than happy to help out if my help were needed or wanted. But mostly I would love to see this done.

Not only might we be able to come up with agreed upon frameworks/hierarchies/definitions, but we might also be able to correlate titles to practices.

I agree with Robert that this could "...help IxDA gain more widespread respect from the larger community."

Joseph Selbie
Founder, CEO Tristream
Web Application Design
http://www.tristream.com

Original Message
From: discuss-bounces at lists.interactiondesigners.com [mailto:discuss-bounces at lists.interactiondesigners.com] On Behalf Of Robert Hoekman, Jr.
Sent: Thursday, January 17, 2008 8:38 AM
To: IxDA
Subject: [IxDA Discuss] Defining UCD (and other things)

Charlie said:

"Well, if people are interested in collaborating on some of these definitions, I would be happy to try and coordinate."

He also suggested a wiki as the tool of choice, which is a good idea. If IxDA has a Basecamp account, though, it might be prudent to compile a short list of people to include in a BC project, who can use a Writeboard to create these definitions and then toss them out to the list for feedback.

Our definitions should go beyond UCD. Should also include ACD, genius design (likely a recap of Saffer's original definition, which is often misinterpreted or otherwise abused), and other processes/approaches. Perhaps the very act of defining these terms will help IxDA gain more widespread respect from the larger community.

Can the IxDA board please speak up? How might we go about doing this?

—
- Robert Hoekman, Jr.-
CEO / Principal Experience Designer
Miskeeto, LLC - www.miskeeto.com

*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 . discuss at ixda.org
Unsubscribe .... http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe
List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines
List Help http://www.ixda.org/help

IxDA does have a Basecamp, but it's used for planning, organizing, and otherwise running the organization. The best place for a definitions Wiki would something on the public website. Perhaps it makes sense to put definitions like this on Wikipedia, so they are more widely publicized, e.g. via Google searches?

Or are you suggesting a staging area for people to reach consensus before releasing to the world?

I agree that a good start would be the definitions of the various processes from Dan Saffer's book.

- Nasir

Perhaps it makes sense to put definitions like this on Wikipedia, so they are more widely publicized, e.g. via Google searches?

Actually, I'm thinking more that the Wikipedia entry should reference the IxDA definition. IxDA should be the reputable and authoritative source for these definitions.

Or are you suggesting a staging area for people to reach consensus before releasing to the world?

1) Use Basecamp/Writeboard to collaborate on definitions between a few people from this list who want to do so

2) "Beta test" the definitions by soliciting feedback from this list

3) Finalize and post on the IxDA site

4) Promote the new "standard" definitions to the larger community

I agree that a good start would be the definitions of the various processes from Dan Saffer's book.

Perhaps, but I was only referencing his definition of "genius design". As I recall, he coined the term (unless I missed this elsewhere).

-r-

Fantastic idea Rob. I've been reading this list quietly for a while and must say we are fortunate to have such an active community. Such a project fits perfect with the goals of the organization (see below) and would empower the community to drive even more value. I think a public wiki is the end goal for this project, I agree that Basecamp would be nice just to help organize us getting to that point.

IxDA Goals (from A Brief History of the Interaction Design Association)

Posted from the new ixda.org
http://www.ixda.org/discuss?post=24685

Hey gang,
I would recommend strongly staying away from Basecamp for this project. This is something that if not immediately you will want to make public/transparent and inclusive within the same infrastructure. Also, basecamp resources are more costly than web resources like a wiki.

Before I/we suggest we open a new wiki on this topic right away, I want to check with someone who was spearheading a similar initiative with which he was going to use a wiki for.

I do think that doing this as openly and transparently as possible would be in the spirit of this community.

More to come soon.

Thanx to all who expressed interest in doing this.

IxDA is an initiative-based organization which has gained more advancement from the efforts of individual initiative than through mass coordinated volunteership. this seems to fit that model really well.

-- dave

Posted from the new ixda.org
http://www.ixda.org/discuss?post=24685

I do think that doing this as openly and transparently as possible would be in the spirit of this community.

Glad to see some support from the board. Thanks, David.

I think it makes more sense to keep the "team" of moderators for this conversation small. I'm all for transparency, hence the suggestion to put definitions out to the larger list for feedback and such before finalizing, but it would be prudent to keep the group of people heading up the initiative small. As we all know, the more people involved in a project, the more likely it becomes a chaotic mess. We need to treat this like a software project, where a team puts something together and then holds a public beta.

A landing page that is visible to the public is fine—I just think that only a few people should be enabled to write and edit until we get a good definition for the IxDA site. We need a small group of people to filter the community's feedback into a solid set of definitions. If everyone can write and edit, we'll never get anywhere.

Backpack would probably be better suited for this, as you can create a page that only certain people can edit, but everyone can see. We could set up a free account and be done in a few days. No need to complicate matters.

If the Board holds too tight a grip on the tools and process, you could end up with a revolt. : )

Ah, heck. I'll just go set it up and spearhead it on my own. Better than spending a week figuring out how to figure it out.

-r-

Hi Robert,

We can easily create a wiki or blog for you that you can do whatever you like with. We would appreciate that initiatives that are done in the ixDA name are kept under the ixda.org domain whether totally transparent or partially transparent.

If you want to completely open source this project and keep it organizationally agnostic, then totally go for it! Maybe UXNet might be the right angle to go for this, since this isn't directly about IxD the way you titled it anyway.

BTW, we will be having a new board, larger, more energized and well fresher, being announced on Saturday the 9th at the conference, so by no means don't take the board's silence on this thread as anything other than well, We are 10' high buried under the conference right now and also don't want to take away too much thunder from the new board coming in. We don't want to leave them an inadvertant Somalia or anything like that. ; )

-- dave

On Jan 18, 2008 3:08 PM, Robert Hoekman, Jr. robert at rhjr.net wrote: I do think that doing this as openly and transparently as possible would be in the spirit of this community. Glad to see some support from the board. Thanks, David. I think it makes more sense to keep the "team" of moderators for this conversation small. I'm all for transparency, hence the suggestion to put definitions out to the larger list for feedback and such before finalizing, but it would be prudent to keep the group of people heading up the initiative small. As we all know, the more people involved in a project, the more likely it [trim]

-- David Malouf
http://synapticburn.com/
http://ixda.org/
http://motorola.com/

We can easily create a wiki or blog for you that you can do whatever you like with. We would appreciate that initiatives that are done in the ixDA name are kept under the ixda.org domain whether totally transparent or partially transparent.

Glad to hear it. Well, let's go for it then! I'm happy to head things up if you like. Let me know how I can help get the ball rolling.

Now, volunteers to play "moderator/author"? Who's in?

-r-

"Now, volunteers to play "moderator/author"? Who's in?"

Consider me volunteered!

Joseph Selbie
Founder and CEO, Tristream
Web Application Design
http://www.tristream.com

I'm in...

On Friday, January 18, 2008, at 03:21PM, "Robert Hoekman, Jr." robert at rhjr.net wrote: We can easily create a wiki or blog for you that you can do whatever you like with. We would appreciate that initiatives that are done in the ixDA name are kept under the ixda.org domain whether totally transparent or partially transparent. Glad to hear it. Well, let's go for it then! I'm happy to head things up if you like. Let me know how I can help get the ball rolling. Now, volunteers to play "moderator/author"? Who's in? -r- *Come to IxDA Interaction08 | Savannah* February 8-10, 2008 in Savannah, GA, USA Register today: http://interaction08.ixda.org/ [trim]

I'll keep a list of volunteers and contact you all in a day or so, once everyone's had a shot to speak up. In the meantime, please continue!

-r-

Please include me on your list.

Thanks,
Jeff

On Jan 18, 2008 3:53 PM, Robert Hoekman, Jr. robert at rhjr.net wrote: I'll keep a list of volunteers and contact you all in a day or so, once everyone's had a shot to speak up. In the meantime, please continue! -r- *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 . discuss at ixda.org Unsubscribe .... http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help http://www.ixda.org/help

If you want to completely open source this project and keep it organizationally agnostic, then totally go for it!

Actually, since you guys are buried with the conference, let's work out a deal. I'll head this up externally (through Miskeeto's Basecamp acct) so you don't have to do anything, post definitions to the list as they're completed for feedback and revision, and then hand them off to the Board once we have finals.

All you'd have to do then is post them to the IxDA site.

This means everything will be done outside of the Board's control (though, I can certainly include Board members in the project so you can keep tabs on things if you like), so I want to make sure the Board will be willing to use these definitions once we complete them.

Thoughts?

-r-

I assume the question was to the IxDA list at large, so I will respond.

I think from a high-level point of view, your process is good. But I would argue, we plan on several review steps prior to this point. It will not be enough to passively hope folks provide feedback along the way. And the final outcome of this is not about the board agreeing to the definitions, it is about the community at large actually using them when they talk to others outside IxDA

Off the top of my head, I see a few key steps along the way where we seek out feedback when:

1) We identify scope (those terms we will define)

2) We have a first draft which may not have a candidate definition. But it does contain many of the most common definitions used and summarizes all of the issues needing to be resolved when nailing it down.

3) We have a draft with a candidate definition

4) Finalize the definitions.

I also believe the goal should not be in creating a "Webster's" like definition. I think it would be better to model it after the Oxford English Dictionary*. e.g. contain the definition of the term as well as a reasonable amount of research to justify the definition. I think this would help make sure we, as IxDA, contribute something new to this endeavor that others before us may not have.

I have never been on a standards committee, but I think we could look at some of their practices. They manage to get buy-in from large competitive entities. We should be able to learn from some of their practices but avoid their pitfalls.

- I would l highly recommend the book "The Professor and the Madman" great history of the origins of the OED. http://www.amazon.com/Professor -Madman -Insanity -English -Dictionary /dp /006099486X

Nick Iozzo
Principal User Experience Architect

tandemseven

847.452.7442 mobile

niozzo at tandemseven.com
http://www.tandemseven.com/

From: Robert Hoekman, Jr.
Sent: Fri 1/18/2008 3:51 PM
To: David Malouf
Cc: discuss at ixda.org
Subject: Re: [IxDA Discuss] Defining UCD (and other things)

If you want to completely open source this project and keep it organizationally agnostic, then totally go for it!

Actually, since you guys are buried with the conference, let's work out a deal. I'll head this up externally (through Miskeeto's Basecamp acct) so you don't have to do anything, post definitions to the list as they're completed for feedback and revision, and then hand them off to the Board once we have finals.

All you'd have to do then is post them to the IxDA site.

This means everything will be done outside of the Board's control (though, I can certainly include Board members in the project so you can keep tabs on things if you like), so I want to make sure the Board will be willing to use these definitions once we complete them.

Thoughts?

-r-

*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 . discuss at ixda.org
Unsubscribe .... http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe
List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines
List Help http://www.ixda.org/help

I think from a high-level point of view, your process is good. But I would argue, we plan on several review steps prior to this point. It will not be enough to passively hope folks provide feedback along the way.

I highly doubt anyone on this list will "passively" provide feedback. : )

How do you propose we acquire this feedback if not through this list?

And the final outcome of this is not about the board agreeing to the definitions, it is about the community at large actually using them when they talk to others outside IxDA

Of course, but putting it on the IxDA site is key to this effort. Part of the goal is to build up IxDA's credibility, so it becomes as authoritative and meaningful as other similar groups, such as AIGA. If we're creating the definitions (and really, who would be more qualified?) as part of IxDA, then we should use the opportunity to improve the IxDA reputation and brand.

Saying you're a member of IxDA should mean something to other designers. It should mean you're part of a group of people who are passionate about their work, to helping others, and to advancing the profession.

Right now, I don't know anyone outside of this list that has even heard of IxDA.

1) We identify scope (those terms we will define)

UCD, ACD, and genius design are the whole list at the moment, but I'm sure other things will come up. I don't see a need to restrict it up front beyond limiting it to design-related definitions.

2) We have a first draft which may not have a candidate definition. But it does contain many of the most common definitions used and summarizes all of the issues needing to be resolved when nailing it down.

First draft should be a new definition based on discussion about existing definitions. Why not start with a candidate definition? I'm not saying it'll fly on the first try, only that we should put forth something that attempts to meet its goal rather than burn time on a hybrid of everything else already out there.

I think it would be better to model it after the Oxford English Dictionary*. e.g. contain the definition of the term as well as a reasonable amount of research to justify the definition.

I agree that research should go into the decision-making process, but elaborate on why you think it should be included in the definition itself?

-r-

I certainly volunteer to help with this as well.

Posted from the new ixda.org
http://www.ixda.org/discuss?post=24685

On Jan 18, 2008, at 3:14 PM, Robert Hoekman, Jr. wrote:

Of course, but putting it on the IxDA site is key to this effort. Part of the goal is to build up IxDA's credibility, so it becomes as authoritative and meaningful as other similar groups, such as AIGA. If we're creating the definitions (and really, who would be more qualified?) as part of IxDA, then we should use the opportunity to improve the IxDA reputation and brand.

One thing to consider would be to get a small set of very high level issues out of the way first before digging in too deeply. A least as defined by the IxDA Board of Directors as a set of decisions to use as a broad framework. A large part of the "creditability" issue, which is indeed very important for any group like the AIGA or IDSA or an emerging group like the IxDA to have, is exactly why do you exist? Why should someone in any organization pay money for your work? Why are you even needed? And why not use someone else from a different organization with a similar skill set?

People who consider themselves part of the IDSA don't largely consider themselves the kind of designer that would want an AIGA membership and vice versa. (Sure, it happens, but being a graphic designer is reasonably different than being an industrial designer for most people.) Why? Because the larger aspect of what an industrial does versus a graphic designer is reasonably distinct and rich. And now a lot of people who write the checks have the concept of what kind of person they should try to hire given the kind of thing they need designed.

To me, I think the IxDA has to get an agreed scope of what the work entails. And to ask yourselves is that "unique" to justify your existence in the first place.

I personally think the digital revolution creates a digital designer. The key aspect to digital products is the need for code and software at the basic level. Software is main secret sauce, and how that software is used either on its own or with hardware is what make digital design possible. Further, digital is the unique thing in all work that requires a rich and intricate back and forth to occur between a product and the person using it. (Which is why I think interaction designers largely get their start in technology centered products like software.) Digital is what makes it all possible between people and products to the degree it requires a person to focus on the design of that part of a larger product. And digital as an integral part of the skill set needed to do the work is what makes it unique and distinct from a group like the IDSA or AIGA.

So why not embrace digital, even at the exclusion of other aspects of what may be possible with "interaction" design? That would be the direction I would favor, for reasons I've stated in this list too many times to repeat here.

If "interaction" is defined as not requiring a digital component, I'm of the opinion the IxDA will fade away in the future as it gets folded into an organization like the IDSA, which is obviously far more along, has many more resources and is better suited to help people to get involved with a broader scope of "interaction" work that doesn't require a digital component. However, the digital piece is what makes someone who does this work viable as their own entity inside any corporation, and digital is already so prevalent that it won't be going away, ever.

I know there are people out there who believe interaction design can move to include "services" design. It's clear I don't prescribe to that direction, which is why I think the IxDA needs to get some clarity here and start to draw that line in the sand at a high level to provide broad guidance.

I also know that I would drop my activity in the IxDA if the reason for being a member in that group is to be something other than a designer who works on the design of digital products.

That's my two cents. I'd be happy to lend my thoughts on any definitions for the IxDA to be considered or ignored, but if the organization is going away from digital and trying to be broader, then I for one would be very interested in knowing that sooner than later. I'm sure there are others like me out there that feel the same way. (In fact I know there are as they always tell me privately but let me take the heat on the list.)

-- Andrei Herasimchuk

Principal, Involution Studios
innovating the digital world

e. andrei at involutionstudios.com
c. +1 408 306 6422

Hello all,

The UPA has been working on a project to define a Usability Body of Knowledge (BoK) since 2004. You can review a definition for UCD and many other common terms at http://www.usabilitybok.org/ in the Glossary section. We also have sections for Methods, Design and other subjects.

We have a volunteer group of 280+ people and would welcome more content and feedback. We are currently utilizing a wiki as a workspace to create more content. Not the easiest solution, but it does allow a lot of people to collaborate on the project from around the world.

If you are interested in volunteering please contact me.

Carol Smith
carologic at gmail.com
UPA BoK Working Group

On Jan 18, 2008, at 5:36 PM, Andrei Herasimchuk wrote:

I know there are people out there who believe interaction design can move to include "services" design. It's clear I don't prescribe to that direction, which is why I think the IxDA needs to get some clarity here and start to draw that line in the sand at a high level to provide broad guidance.

The reason this is ties into what you think is the core of IxD: technology and software. Interaction designers didn't get involved in services until there was technology there for us to be involved in. When human cashiers did all the check-out at the grocery stores there weren't any interaction designers. Add a self-checkout and voila, you get interaction designers (hopefully).

We're foolish and short-sighted if we think that all of our work in the future will be traditional software and websites.

Dan

On Jan 18, 2008, at 7:45 PM, Dan Saffer wrote:

We're foolish and short-sighted if we think that all of our work in the future will be traditional software and websites.

First off, I said "digital" which at this point encompasses software and such, but will become much more. (Your whole Charmr project is exactly along these lines.) But digital is just that, anything with a digital piece. If you had a bathroom mirror with a digital interface that did things like track medication intake and showed me what to take and had a multi-touch screen built-in so I could do things like watch CNN while shaving in the morning, that would easily qualify by my definition. A lot of things you see in a movie like Minority Report qualify that are not traditional software as it exists today. The future is going to be digital, so by my definition, the opportunity is quite large.

Second, "interaction" that does not contain a digital component is an entirely different animal than interaction that does, especially because often it gets into issues that don't exist in the digital part of the equation. I'm suggesting that one will always be unique and needed now that the digital revolution is in full swing while the other is something else entirely that will more than likely get merged with other already established design practices or serve to only dilute the definition of the design practice, something which can hurt credibility of the those trying to practice the profession.

So I hope that clears that up.

-- Andrei Herasimchuk

Principal, Involution Studios
innovating the digital world

e. andrei at involutionstudios.com
c. +1 408 306 6422

On Jan 18, 2008, at 9:41 PM, Andrei Herasimchuk wrote:

I'm suggesting that one will always be unique and needed now that the digital revolution is in full swing while the other is something else entirely that will more than likely get merged with other already established design practices or serve to only dilute the definition of the design practice, something which can hurt credibility of the those trying to practice the profession.

Let me rephrase a bit:

I'm suggesting that one (the digital one) will always be unique and needed now that the digital revolution is in full swing. The other one (the broader one some people on this list suggest is the larger goal of interaction design) is something else entirely that in my opinion will get merged into another already established design practice. If not, the broader one would only serve to dilute the definition of the digital practice, something which I feel would hurt the credibility of those trying to practice what I personally think the dominate case: digital product design.

So... let me be even more clear... I personally would appreciate if the IxDA would survey its members and find out how many people actually practice design on anything other than digital products, be it software, web site, etc. I would be shocked if the number were over 10%, and am willing to bet it's much lower than 10%. If the number is indeed pretty low, which is my unscientific guess, I think that for the IxDA to attempt to broaden its definition beyond a clear need for digital designers in the world would actually wind up doing more damage than good. And even if the IxDA wants to be more than digital, I think it's shortsighted to try and get ahead of curve when even in 2008 I find so many people who don't have the skills, craft or understanding to do the large majority of design work for current digital products.

Strategically speaking, I think it would make more sense to create a sidegroup or SIG inside the IxDA to attack the broader definition portion of interaction and take a longer time defining that, while focusing all the current attention on establishing the current practice and organization for the very large need we have right at this moment: a real digital design organization that supports people who make digital products, helps them learn more craft and skills, works with the universities to create better educational curriculum for it, and establishes the practice of digital design so it becomes a high level, integral component of the corporate world.

-- Andrei Herasimchuk

Principal, Involution Studios
innovating the digital world

e. andrei at involutionstudios.com
c. +1 408 306 6422

Andrei,
I cannot think of any part of interaction design (NOT User Experience Design) that would not contain a micro-chip at some level of the equation these days.

The fact that I feel equally strongly that mentioning the word digital in an organizational definition is unnecessarily limiting. By its very nature IxD is form agnostic. I should be able to move between designing the entire interface of a mobile computer system ( http://tinyurl.com/2ltawl - Motorola Wearable Enterprise Computer) — the software and the outside interfaces and then also move on to designing iTunes.

Now if in your world all aspects of this design eco-system fit under digital, then great. But when you say digital, and then start talking about # 's of people doing web/software it sounds like you mean digital = software and wouldn't even include things like tangible interfaces, VUIs, location-based interactions, ambient interactions, etc.

But this is why the word "digital" is so unnecessary if not unnecessarily divisive. We can be a larger and more powerful group if we include more designers than exclude.

And you know, you may be right. Maybe we will be merged into a bigger "D"esign organization like ICSID, which actually just merged with ICONOGRAD to form an even bigger design alliance called IDA (w/ fashion design in there as well).

But that is just because as you keep raising the lens to higher altitudes the differences fall away. I would much rather have SIGs within IxDA on web, on even enterprise web and hardware design and services (I like the POS system example, Dan) then to limit the nature of interaction design is at a foundational level.

Now, I do not make the decision for the organization except through my own voice. I think it would be sad to create an IxDA that wouldn't really include everything, b/c I think there is so much that web designers can and should learn from the hardware IxDs who quite frankly have been doing IxD a lot longer (having coined the term in the 80's).

A great example of IxD work that I use in my history of IxD slides where digital isn't there, is the behavioral and system design of the communication system between the bridge on a large ship and the engine room. There is a merging of voice, graphics, and tangible interfaces throughout, yet not a single microchip or transistor until about 50 years ago.

The rules of IxD that you used in building Photoshop & the suite of graphics and communications tools under the Adobe banner are the same ones used by those who designed that system at an Human Factors/Ergonomics level, but also at the level of behaviors to meet goals and motivations.

Buxton's work on the Portfolio Board (I think I have the name wrong) is all about taking analog systems of a design studio and moving them to the digital. But the analog systems are still strong in his model.

If your vision of digital can include the design of a Razor as well as the design of Songza it is so broad that it well, is unnecessary, so why focus on it at all? It just creates limits that may not (probably won't) be there as we move forward, or even if it is other new divisions will occur that are even more important. But "behavior" & "interaction" will always be there. I.e. what happens when digital gets replaced with biological? Will the behavioral and interactive theories loose their core essence? Sure, they will evolve, but there will be behavior at the core. Technology distinctions like "digital" are inconsequential to IxD, so is focusing on them.

— dave

— dave

Posted from the new ixda.org
http://www.ixda.org/discuss?post=24685

On Jan 19, 2008, at 12:17 AM, dave malouf wrote:

The fact that I feel equally strongly that mentioning the word digital in an organizational definition is unnecessarily limiting. By its very nature IxD is form agnostic.

I'm not so sure. How can IxDA be form agnostic if one product has a digital component (an iPhone) and another one might not (a standard wall phone)? The inherent "interaction" of the two is significantly different, due to the distinction of the digital component and what that component provides the designer of the product to do. (For this example, pretend the phone is more like the one you used back in the 1970s or even 1980s.) If the interaction were similar but not distinct enough, I guess I would concede the point, but the two things are radically different in how people use them and how they are designed.

I should be able to move between designing the entire interface of a mobile computer system ( http://tinyurl.com/2ltawl - Motorola Wearable Enterprise Computer) — the software and the outside interfaces and then also move on to designing iTunes.

Both of those examples are digital, aren't they? I think the question is can you go from designing the interface of iTunes to redoing the flow of how FedEx operates door to door package delivery and services. Or how you can move from working on a mobile computing system to changing the way medical services are offered to the public via insurance companies or such.

Now if in your world all aspects of this design eco-system fit under digital, then great. But when you say digital, and then start talking about # 's of people doing web/software it sounds like you mean digital = software and wouldn't even include things like tangible interfaces, VUIs, location-based interactions, ambient interactions, etc.

I do mean digital equals software. Or even more fundamental: code. Anything that requires code, logic, interaction, presentation, etc. Digital requires a microchip in my view, and needs code to be useful, or its just expensive sand.

But that is just because as you keep raising the lens to higher altitudes the differences fall away. I would much rather have SIGs within IxDA on web, on even enterprise web and hardware design and services (I like the POS system example, Dan) then to limit the nature of interaction design is at a foundational level.

Understood. But if you get too broad, how is that helpful in the trenches? What do you gain by being broad, especially at this stage of the game?

Now, I do not make the decision for the organization except through my own voice. I think it would be sad to create an IxDA that wouldn't really include everything, b/c I think there is so much that web designers can and should learn from the hardware IxDs who quite frankly have been doing IxD a lot longer (having coined the term in the 80's).

What is "everything?" You keep saying that, but I honestly doubt it really is "everything." I'm pretty sure it's a list of things. In that list of things, the question becomes what is useful and what is not as useful for a design practice. And if the useful is more digital, why shy away from it? If its not, so be it! At least we'd know.

A great example of IxD work that I use in my history of IxD slides where digital isn't there, is the behavioral and system design of the communication system between the bridge on a large ship and the engine room. There is a merging of voice, graphics, and tangible interfaces throughout, yet not a single microchip or transistor until about 50 years ago.

The rules of IxD that you used in building Photoshop & the suite of graphics and communications tools under the Adobe banner are the same ones used by those who designed that system at an Human Factors/Ergonomics level, but also at the level of behaviors to meet goals and motivations.

You'd have to list out what you think those rules are. I know exactly how I went about the design of the Adobe common interface to form the basis of the Creative Suite way back then, and how I made decisions, and what criteria I used, and how I could only do certain things given company politics, technology, constraints, shipping schedules, etc. I'm the one who defined it after all. But unless you list out what rules you think I used and the rules used in your system deign example, I can't comment on the relevance of your point yet. It might instructive to follow through on that to see where it leads us.

If your vision of digital can include the design of a Razor as well as the design of Songza it is so broad that it well, is unnecessary, so why focus on it at all?

The Razor or Razr? (I assume you mean the phone, right?) If you mean the form factor and industrial design of the Razr, then I'm not qualified to do that. I'd have to go back to school or least out to the shed and get my hands dirty building tangible things again like I used to when I did set and production design in my younger days. But if you mean anything that has to do with how the software or digital aspects of the Razr work, then absolutely. This includes finding ways to work with the hardware components that would drive interacting with the underlying software or code.

And that's largely the distinction I make. As long as it touches the code portion of the product, thats where I think it becomes digital design, interaction design, interface design, or whatever we all finally wind up calling it.

It just creates limits that may not (probably won't) be there as we move forward, or even if it is other new divisions will occur that are even more important.

What you call limits, I see as definition. I find that with definition comes clarity. With clarity comes a myriad of possibilities of things I can do or strive towards achieving. It's not a limitation to me, it guidance. The very thing I lacked getting into this field and for which I had to find my own way since no one else was defining it very well. (And yes, that makes me grumpy sometimes. Okay... it makes me grumpy all of the time.)

But "behavior" & "interaction" will always be there. I.e. what happens when digital gets replaced with biological?

You tell me. I imagine I'll be too old to know or care when that day arrives. I'll leave the evolutionary path of the profession to those it will impact the most, which is certainly not me. And I'm not sure what to do at all with biological as that scares the pants off me personally. It's outside of my conceptual reality.

Technology distinctions like "digital" are inconsequential to IxD, so is focusing on them.

Respectfully, I disagree. Design — when it comes to earning a paycheck — is not an academic exercise. It has specific processes, specific deliverables, specific practices, and specific ideas by those who practice it. It's useful to know the distinction between industrial design and graphic design, if for anything to figure out which direction you might want to take your career.

I think distinctions are extraordinarily useful in helping one to create definitions of how to do one's work day to day, or how to strive for career goals knowing what specifically the profession is at a more refined level. I don't find them restrictive, or constraining, or whatever. I personally find them freeing as they provide the foundation on which to build a body of work.

-- Andrei Herasimchuk

Principal, Involution Studios
innovating the digital world

e. andrei at involutionstudios.com
c. +1 408 306 6422

So - if I am designing the control mechanisms for an elevator that is electric and mechanical - I am not an interaction designer? I does seem odd to shift the definition from what we do, to what technology or medium we do it with.

Mark

On Jan 19, 2008, at 5:39 AM, Andrei Herasimchuk wrote:

On Jan 19, 2008, at 12:17 AM, dave malouf wrote: The fact that I feel equally strongly that mentioning the word digital in an organizational definition is unnecessarily limiting. By its very nature IxD is form agnostic. I'm not so sure. How can IxDA be form agnostic if one product has a digital component (an iPhone) and another one might not (a standard wall phone)? The inherent "interaction" of the two is significantly different, due to the distinction of the digital component and what that component provides the designer of the product to do. (For this example, [trim]

I think I'm one of the "some people" Andrei refers to. I'd honestly be surprised if more than a handful of people here see Interaction Design as extending beyond the digital. If they occassionally show up I'm sure they quickly get turned away. Such designers exist, moreso in Europe than in the US, but this isn't exactly a hospitable environment for their voices. In my experience the community has been reflexively hostile to anything beyond a digital worldview, going all the way back to Dan's first Signal Orange post in 2004.

I'm not really wild about the idea of defining disciplines but if you're going to do it, it doesn't make sense to base those definitions on the medium. Constraining interaction design to pixels and bits is like constraining graphic design to paper and ink or industrial design to glass and metal. If disciplines were tied to their history, graphic designers would still be working in chromolithography.

Graphic design more properly encompasses a world of symbols and images. Industrial design? Form and mass. Interaction design? Actions and behaviors. Graphic designers can ply their trade on a letterpress just as validly as they can with pixels—or with skywriting for that matter. Subdisciplines can develop. Logo designers and typographers and poster designers can co-exist without threatening each other because they're united by a common understanding of the foundation of graphic design. The medium doesn't define the discipline.

Our discipline revolves around behaviors and actions. It can involve buying airline tickets at Expedia or buying them from an agent at SFO. The same thinking that results in customer flows at the iTunes Music Store can be applied to customer flows at a Virgin Megastore; working with architects instead of programmers. As a discipline we need to learn more as we begin to work in different media. The patterns are out there and have been for years. What kind of spaces encourage interaction? What kind discourage it? It can be something as simple as the arrangement of chairs in a schoolroom. Tactics differ, deliverables differ, but at their core are about designing useful, usable and desirable interactions for human beings. There's a case study coming out soon in Design Issues about work Ziba did for a prototype FedEx store that serves as an excellent example of the potential for this kind of collaboration.

Does it make sense to try to contain this scope within a single discussion list? Maybe not. I'm not an industrial designer, but graphic designers have plenty of specialized places to discuss craft. It's clear to me that IxDA has become a defacto forum for discussing matters of software interface design. I've heard the arguments that interface design is about form and not behavior but to me that's not compelling. Good interface design encompasses both. The book Tog on Interface describes a great example of interface design involving a set of checkboxes that needed to ensure at least one option checked. It's a fascinating story but the team clearly wrestled with matters of both form and behavior. So why isn't it an example of interaction design?

To me, the biggest gulf in our understanding is this: I believe that interface design differs from interaction design primarily in its focus on the artifact, regardless of whether that focus is on form or behavior. It didn't strike me until a few months ago, but when people on this list talk about behavior, they're almost invariably talking about the behavior of the artifact, not the human behavior it facilitates or requires. When the MacOS login box shakes its head "no" at me, I consider that a great example of interface design, but not a significant example of interaction design; it's just a clever animation. Text messaging on the other hand is a phenomenal example of interaction design. Dead simple interface, especially before T9 or other type-ahead conventions became common. But completely unprecedented interactions: Two people communicating non-verbally in nearly real-time across space and on the go. The interaction it facilitates is the key to its popularity, not the interaction with the artifact.

Here's a good shibboleth for recognizing interaction design. Does it actively change patterns of social behavior? The telephone? The elevator? Fundamentally reorganizes business. Friendster? Twitter? Reifies your circle of friends. The post-1972 US presidential primary process? Crazyness. Starbucks installs WiFi? There you go. Birth control pills? Absolutely. Recycling? Huge. Adobe invents Postscript? Revolutionary change. Ebay? Connects and empowers people all over the globe—regardless of the interface.

I don't remember where I read this recently but during the early days of electrification, people were always tremendously excited at the idea. "The electricity is coming, " they would say. But gradually, as electricity became more common it faded into the background and people began to take it for granted, focusing instead on the changes it afforded. People will eventually take the ability to manipulate the digital world for granted. We've got elementary school children who are becoming progressively more competent authors in this domain. Today, what we do in the digital medium is incredibly important. Tomorrow we may wake up with all the cachet of a telegraph operator. But as long as interaction design is concerned with problems of timeless human behavior it won't be going anywhere.

Posted from the new ixda.org
http://www.ixda.org/discuss?post=24685

On Jan 19, 2008 7:54 PM, Mark Schraad mschraad at mac.com wrote: So - if I am designing the control mechanisms for an elevator that is electric and mechanical - I am not an interaction designer? I does seem odd to shift the definition from what we do, to what technology or medium we do it with.

Hi

This is exactly what I asked in my post
http://www.ixda.org/discuss.php?post=24636# 24678 as to where exactly is the line when an Industrial Designer becomes and Interaction Designer and vice versa. I guess your control mechanism designer is also trapped within the blurry lines of Industrial and Interaction design. Let me try and elaborate my point of view.

To begin with let me first define what "Interaction" means to me. Interaction is really an exchange of communication between two entities across a medium more specifically an interface. The two entities in most situations will be human-human, human-machine or machine-machine.

The quality of the Interaction between the two entities depends on the quality of the interface-how well its defined and more so how well the two entities understand it. The better the interface better will be the interaction. So that brings in what designers really do. They strive to design the best possible interaction between the two entities which in other words means they strive to create an interface that is as well defined as possible (within the constraints) and more so is understandable by the two entities to start an interaction across it.

Now I will like to take each of the individual design fields and try to define what they do.

Industrial Designer: Their main focus is to design an interface between human and machine where the machine is generally an electrical or mechanical device. And since there is an interface, there is an interaction. The car driver looking at a speedometer to read the speed is doing an interaction with the car (asking the car at what speed its going) where the speedometer is the interface. The guy who is standing inside an elevator is communicating with the elevator through the buttons to tell it where to go and when to stop and the LCD display which the elevator uses to communicate back to the person to tell at which floor the elevator is.

Graphics Designer: Their main focus is to design a visual interface between a human and a machine where the machine generally is a information system displaying some information. The interaction is the exchange of information visually from the graphics display to the human eye. The person browsing a website to buy tickets is interacting with the website and using the graphics (including text) as the interface for communication. Please note, the end result is booking tickets not browsing through some fancy graphical design. Here again since the graphics system is the interface its facilitating the interaction.

Software Designer (Not developer). Their main focus is to design an interface across which code entities (be it functions, objects, classes, operating system with the application) take to each other and exchange data to perform a meaningful task. This really is a case of machine-machine interaction as the interacting objects are two software entities or one software one hardware entity. Again an interface and an interaction across that interface and the interaction is what is of prime importance.

Hardware Designer: Their main focus is to design an interface across two hardware entities say - microprocessor and memory or your laptop and cellphone across bluetooth. Here again there are two entities, one interface and an interaction that between the two entities that needs to be done.

I can go on and on and take each design discipline but every discipline you take has the core focus of creating an interface for an interaction to happen between two entities. The interesting part is that facilitating the interaction is the sole purpose of each design activity and the success of each design activity is gauged by how well the two entities are able to interact using the designed interface. Which in effect means that interaction design is fundamental to each design discipline and not a discipline in itself. Interaction design exists within the context of a design discipline and not standalone. The fact though remains that Interaction design has largely been synonymous with Human-Computer Interaction design and I believe this has been the root cause of all the confusion. We took the fundamental core of all design disciplines and mapped it to the specific design discipline of Human Computer Interaction. No wonder an Industrial Designer comes up and asks why he is any less an Interaction Designer compared to a person designing the website for booking the airline tickets :-)

Cheers
Pankaj

On Jan 19, 2008, at 7:56 AM, Jeff Howard wrote:

Graphic design more properly encompasses a world of symbols and images. Industrial design? Form and mass. Interaction design? Actions and behaviors. Graphic designers can ply their trade on a letterpress just as validly as they can with pixels—or with skywriting for that matter. Subdisciplines can develop. Logo designers and typographers and poster designers can co-exist without threatening each other because they're united by a common understanding of the foundation of graphic design. The medium doesn't define the discipline.

I largely agree with this, and you make a lot of good points. However, given your example the final creation still defines the practice, if not the medium. In other words, graphic designers and industrial designers create things at the end of the day regardless of medium as you rightly point out. Those creations largely share common components in some way or another. If interaction design is only about actions and behaviors, then what is it that you are making that is tangible at the end of the day? Diagrams or workflow analysis? If so, that seems to put the interaction designer at an extremely weak point as those are only definition documents, which are then often taken out of the hands of the designer when it comes to execution.

That's probably the biggest point of confusion. Because if what you make are deliverables that are used only to define the final product, then what are you making really? And how can you earn the level of need and respect of the designers that do make things in other defined fields?

Imagine this for second, even if it seems a little silly. (Or least forgive me for my preference in television): In the future, interaction design is a more mainstream profession, and Bravo decides to create a reality television series called Interact This! built around the same model as Project Runway. Now imagine how the interaction designers would operate on such a show for the challenges. What exactly would they do?

Maybe I'm putting the cart before the horse here, but digital creates a well rounded place to start to create a definition that is well scoped. With code, there many specific things you can do that are high level enough to be used in multiple mediums, as long as there is a code component. Without digital or code, the variety of things "interaction" can be is rather broad and not very well defined. It could literally be almost anything that involves humans, which for our practical reality is everything.

To me, the biggest gulf in our understanding is this: I believe that interface design differs from interaction design primarily in its focus on the artifact, regardless of whether that focus is on form or behavior. It didn't strike me until a few months ago, but when people on this list talk about behavior, they're almost invariably talking about the behavior of the artifact, not the human behavior it facilitates or requires. When the MacOS login box shakes its head "no" at me, I consider that a great example of interface design, but not a significant example of interaction [trim]

I understand you point, but even in this example, what makes text messaging interaction possible in the first place is a digital component. That's why I focus on it as a term that's important. While it's true the interaction is defined by more an analog mode of input like a mini-QWERTY keyboard and the people who want to communicate with each other, behind the scenes are all sorts of pieces of code used to process the input to make the interaction possible. And then there's the mini-displays that are also driven by code to turn pixels on and off, and otherwise present information to make the interaction possible. And the presentation of those pixels is integral to driving the interaction that exists as well.

I understand there's a core "interaction" between people in the example, but your text messaging interaction would simply not exist if code didn't make it possible. So if we define more examples of what "interaction" design is and discover there are more digital examples than not, shouldn't that be important? Further, shouldn't that also be used in helping to define interaction design as distinct from graphic design and industrial design?

Here's a good shibboleth for recognizing interaction design. Does it actively change patterns of social behavior? The telephone? The elevator? Fundamentally reorganizes business. Friendster? Twitter? Reifies your circle of friends. The post-1972 US presidential primary process? Crazyness. Starbucks installs WiFi? There you go. Birth control pills? Absolutely. Recycling? Huge. Adobe invents Postscript? Revolutionary change. Ebay? Connects and empowers people all over the globe—regardless of the interface.

You are now exemplifying the danger, imho. Once you go so broad like this, I think practically speaking it's less useful as mans to define one's career, especially so early in the development of the profession.

I mean... I guess I could do it all, but who has the time?

And fwiw, Paul Rand did a lot more than graphic design. He designed the IBM Stores, the IBM packaging and the entire IBM purchasing experience long before Apple did that sort of things as well. Was he an "experience" designer? Was he more than a graphic designer? Sure, you could easily call him that, but he was largely a graphic designer in his approach to craft. More importantly, it took him some thirty odd years to get to the point in his career where he was given the money by those that write the checks to do things like create the IBM purchasing experience. Even more importantly, there aren't going to be a lot of Paul Rands in the annals of design history. What are the rest of us supposed to do?

So, would it have helped to call the graphic design field "experience design" back then given that one of it's main influencers did a lot more than just make logos or brochures? Obviously, I'm not convinced that would have helped at all to go "broad" during that point in time.

-- Andrei Herasimchuk

Principal, Involution Studios
innovating the digital world

e. andrei at involutionstudios.com
c. +1 408 306 6422

The answer to the question of how we should define interaction design, from my point of view, is not so much a matter of what it could be, as it is a matter of what we want it to be.

I think we have a big opportunity to clearly and pragmatically establish interaction design as a major discipline.

Architects "own" the design of buildings.

Industrial designers "own" the design of objects.

I think we should "own" the design of interfaces.

Architects are defined by their medium. Industrial designers are defined by their medium. And it works well. Sure there are blurry edges, architects design public spaces, gardens, etc., but still the obvious heart of what they do is to design buildings.

Also, I'm afraid that our reach will exceed our grasp if we define ourselves as applicable to all mediums. If we include the interactions that people have in a retail environment as part of interaction design, then not only do we stray from the core medium of interfaces, but we also exceed our grasp — because there is already a strong design specialty that focuses on retail spaces.

Sure there is some risk in defining ourselves too tightly, so I would advocate a definition of interface that can evolve forward in time — but I also think it needs to be obvious enough that laymen understand it. From my point of view, that rules out anything that isn't tangible. It must be touchable, hearable, viewable, etc., and be "something" through which a single person interacts. Right now, 99% of the things being made that fall under those criteria are visual, touchable, digital interfaces.

So let's embrace it. Let's own the design of interfaces.

I don't think this implies that interaction is the wrong name for us, and that we should be called interface designers. After all, architects are not called buildatechs, nor are industrial designers called object designers. Architect and industrial designer are simply the names that "stuck" over time, and which are now commonly accepted to mean what they mean. We can do the same for interaction design but only — in my opinion — if we associate it clearly with an easily understood medium — interfaces.

I think we would be missing a big opportunity if our definition becomes too academic and broad. Like "human factors" or "experience design", interaction design could become only a conceptual framework that is applicable to almost anything.

I am advocating a pragmatic, career oriented, business oriented approach and purpose to IXDA — which may not be congruent with the overall view — but I think may resonate with many people on this list. I would hope this becomes an important discussion for the board to facilitate.

I envision that a more focused and pragmatic approach (aligning ourselves to a particular medium) would more easily lead to training, certification, degrees, etc. just as architecture and industrial design have done. One needs a rich understanding of one's medium to design to it. Much of the training to be an architect is about understanding the medium as well as the process of design.

I think interaction design is at a cross-roads. Does it become an adjunct discipline that is applicable to many different design processes across many different media, or does it become focused on one medium and thereby become a big "D" design discipline.

My $.02 — or maybe $.04.

Joseph Selbie
Founder, CEO Tristream
Web Application Design

I think in the end I'm very happy NOT designing things, but rather I'd be the more influential person designing the ideas and telling the person who design things what I want them to do and if they don't get it right, tell them to do it again.

Or ...

Collaborate with experts in form making w/ my expertise in dialog creation. This is what I do now, and I have to say this sort of co-designing to me is the model that I would like to see pushed forward.

Being charge of interaction and form is nice but some subjects are just more complex and when you are working at that level of complexity (digital/analog eco-systems and services) its great to apply design theory and practice in this way.

things are commodities. ideas generate true value.

-- dave

Posted from the new ixda.org
http://www.ixda.org/discuss?post=24685

Hi All:

Some very interesting posts. I have gone through some of the same agonies over the years. When I joined UPA as an interaction designer there was a question as to whether interaction design was actually usability. The reason that this came up was that many of the people (at that time) were involved in assessing usability rather than designing for it.

Later, when I was on the UPA Board, I was "VP of Outreach" and needed to grapple with the question of whether usability was just about software and digital devices or included other environments (or were these the sole province of ergonomic)?

For what it's worth, here is where I ended up in my thinking:

1. Go for the broadest definitions possible. You never know how the field will evolve.

2. Recognize that the positioning of an association is different from the positioning of an individual. What I mean by this is that professionally I have some strong ideas about what design is and how the profession should operate. I will advocate for these positions on my website, blogs and in publications.

However, what an association like IxDA should do is different. Associations represent a diversity of people and views and have to be careful not to limit their scope and become exclusionary since that would limit the growth of the profession.

This becomes especially tricky when the association wants to set itself up as an agent of quality assurance through licensing, certification, ethics or even in providing training.

Charlie

Posted from the new ixda.org
http://www.ixda.org/discuss?post=24685

Dave,

If I am understanding you correctly, you are saying that you prefer to be in a particular position or phase of the process — but doesn't the process, looked at as a whole, still end up in an interface?

If this is the case, then I would say that there is already plenty of room within the discipline of interaction design for specialists, principles, generalists, etc.

There are many architects who have a role analogous to the one you describe, but they are still very much architects, because they need to understand the whole in order to do their part of it — and the ultimate purpose of the process is still designing a building.

Joseph Selbie
Founder, CEO Tristream
Web Application Design
http://www.tristream.com

Original Message
From: discuss-bounces at lists.interactiondesigners.com [mailto:discuss-bounces at lists.interactiondesigners.com] On Behalf Of dave malouf
Sent: Saturday, January 19, 2008 2:22 PM
To: discuss at ixda.org
Subject: Re: [IxDA Discuss] Defining UCD (and other things)

I think in the end I'm very happy NOT designing things, but rather I'd be the more influential person designing the ideas and telling the person who design things what I want them to do and if they don't get it right, tell them to do it again.

Or ...

Collaborate with experts in form making w/ my expertise in dialog creation. This is what I do now, and I have to say this sort of co-designing to me is the model that I would like to see pushed forward.

Being charge of interaction and form is nice but some subjects are just more complex and when you are working at that level of complexity (digital/analog eco-systems and services) its great to apply design theory and practice in this way.

things are commodities. ideas generate true value.

-- dave

Posted from the new ixda.org
http://www.ixda.org/discuss?post=24685

*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 . discuss at ixda.org
Unsubscribe .... http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe
List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines
List Help http://www.ixda.org/help

Hi all,

First post ever! Thought I'd weigh in about the tangents going on here, as well as the tangent in the Mac Air thread
http://www.ixda.org/discuss.php?post=24636.

What's becoming increasingly apparent is that career titles are changing and blurring. For example, my degree is in 'Product Design' (not 'Industrial Design'). This caused all sorts of issues as people ask - what is a product? Essentially the names are the same, but from what I understand, the degree was named that way (in 2002) to give a bit more scope as Industrial Design sounded too much like designing machines. Another reason is that industrial designers are increasingly having to think about systems rather than just products e.g. having a carpet hiring system rather than just buying it.

Maybe there is a similar thing going on with Interaction Design vs. interface design (or even web design). It implies a wider field - e.g. I think I'd talk about interactions rather than interface with the Nintendo Wii!

Also with questions as to whether Industrial Design is all about the hardware and Interaction Design is about the software - most product designers would start that way I think, as we are taught about objects and form first. However, muddying the waters a bit are the terms 'experience design' or 'design for experience' which have been floating around for the last 10 or so years (was is suggested by Brenda Laurel? Would have to check my books).

Basically the idea is that form and materials can only do so much - if you think through the whole process of using it (and sometimes easy-to-use doesn't give the most resonant experience - think automatic vs. manual coffee machines!) you're far more likely to come up with something that people will become attached to.

From what I know, industrial design-type people would probably not talk

about designing interactions unless there was software involved. However, most up with the latest literature would think about the experience.

That would be I think where the Mac Air comes in - the industrial designers would have been thinking about the experience of using it - approaching it, opening it, exploring etc.

Ideally, a well managed product with an electronic component aligns the experience of using the physical with the virtual, by using personas, mood boards etc. Then the really amazing stuff happens ...

No, I'm not saying that I only want to be in a particular phase. I'm saying that ideation is more powerful part of the whole than the craft. If I can also guide and challenge the craft and validate it and define how it should come out, than the crafts person then becomes a chisel weilded by me, or becomes a partner engaged in the same level of creative composition from our mutually different areas of expertise.

-- dave

On Jan 19, 2008 5:57 PM, Joseph Selbie jselbie at tristream.com wrote: Dave, If I am understanding you correctly, you are saying that you prefer to be in a particular position or phase of the process — but doesn't the process, looked at as a whole, still end up in an interface? If this is the case, then I would say that there is already plenty of room within the discipline of interaction design for specialists, principles, generalists, etc. There are many architects who have a role analogous to the one you describe, but they are still very much architects, because they need to understand the whole in order [trim]

-- David Malouf
http://synapticburn.com/
http://ixda.org/
http://motorola.com/

On Jan 19, 2008, at 2:01 PM, Andrei Herasimchuk wrote:

Imagine this for second, even if it seems a little silly. (Or least forgive me for my preference in television): In the future, interaction design is a more mainstream profession, and Bravo decides to create a reality television series called Interact This! built around the same model as Project Runway. Now imagine how the interaction designers would operate on such a show for the challenges. What exactly would they do?

I would expect it to look a lot like the IDEO shopping cart episode of 60 minutes. Most of the time would be given to research, ideation, and mockups, with the high-fidelity prototype being churned out in the last 10 minutes for the finale.

Maybe I'm putting the cart before the horse here, but digital creates a well rounded place to start to create a definition that is well scoped. With code, there many specific things you can do that are high level enough to be used in multiple mediums, as long as there is a code component. Without digital or code, the variety of things "interaction" can be is rather broad and not very well defined. It could literally be almost anything that involves humans, which for our practical reality is everything.

I'm not buying it. If Black & Decker hires me to help make their next lawnmower easier to use, by golly I've got worthwhile skills and experience to bring to bare. How do you turn it on and off? How do you account for safety issues? If it's electric, how do you charge it, and how does it communicate its status? You can't tell me that the one thing that determines whether or not this would be Interaction Design is the presence or absence of a digital display. Regardless of whether I start it with a mechanical switch or a soft button on a touch- screen, the overarching problem to be solved and the processes I will use to solve it are exactly the same.

I mean... I guess I could do it all, but who has the time?

Just because you are an Interaction Designer doesn't mean that you have to design everything that any Interaction Designer has ever designed. Your focus is computer software, as is mine. But if an Interaction Designer ends up specializing in power tools, she's still an Interaction Designer and is still a welcome part of this organization.

David Malouf said:
No, I'm not saying that I only want to be in a particular phase. I'm saying that ideation is more powerful part of the whole than the craft. If I can also guide and challenge the craft and validate it and define how it should come out, than the crafts person then becomes a chisel weilded by me, or becomes a partner engaged in the same level of creative composition from our mutually different areas of expertise.

I'm right there with you, Dave. Depending on the project, I may end up building the HTML and CSS for the front end of the application. In another project, I'll create Photoshop renderings of screens and write specifications to go with them, and then work with a developer to make sure they get implemented as I intend. For another task, I may do some pencil sketches to work out high-level design and then hand them off to another designer to work out the details. One thing is certain: as our company grows, I get stretched thinner. In the future, I expect to be doing a lot more ideation and direction of others, and a lot less pixel-pushing.

Jack

Jack L. Moffett
Interaction Designer
inmedius
412.459.0310 x219
http://www.inmedius.com

To design is much more than simply
to assemble, to order, or even to edit;
it is to add value and meaning,
to illuminate, to simplify, to clarify,
to modify, to dignify, to dramatize,
to persuade, and perhaps even to amuse.

- Paul Rand

On Jan 19, 2008, at 8:33 PM, Jack Moffett wrote:

I would expect it to look a lot like the IDEO shopping cart episode of 60 minutes. Most of the time would be given to research, ideation, and mockups, with the high-fidelity prototype being churned out in the last 10 minutes for the finale.

As long as the interaction designer is actually building and/or coding that prototype with their own two hands — which includes the presentation and aesthetic of it among other things — then I'm agreement. Now the question would probably be... who else would agree with that? Or would you disagree with me on those qualifications, and would need to ask a different question?

I'm not buying it. If Black & Decker hires me to help make their next lawnmower easier to use, by golly I've got worthwhile skills and experience to bring to bare. How do you turn it on and off? How do you account for safety issues? If it's electric, how do you charge it, and how does it communicate its status? You can't tell me that the one thing that determines whether or not this would be Interaction Design is the presence or absence of a digital display.

How do you go about designing those things on a lawnmower? Or at least the "interaction" of those things? I ask because I honestly couldn't tell you! Ask me how to design a painting tool with a Wacom input device using a tablet computing system with a wireless connection, and I could design you a tool that if it had the right pixel processing engine under it could allow an artist to sit in the park and paint like they they might with a real canvas and set of paints.

How would I design the safety features on a lawnmower? Nope... you got me. I have absolutely no idea. I wouldn't even know where to begin with any confidence.

Part of picking a career as either a graphic designer or an industrial designer is because one wants to design the things those fields specialize in. How does someone go to college and pick a degree in designing anything as long as it has a "behavioral" component. Doesn't everything have that? And if so, what exactly does it mean?

Regardless of whether I start it with a mechanical switch or a soft button on a touch- screen, the overarching problem to be solved and the processes I will use to solve it are exactly the same.

This is where I also disagree. The presence of software or logic present in the system you are designing to the degree that digital allows completely changes the design problem. It's the difference between designing a rotary phone and an iPhone. The complexity of what software allows and the kind of design issues, specifically with its interaction, presents rather significant differences.

Personally, I think there's plenty to do with digital and software. Does that mean I think working on power tools is inferior? No. I just think it's different, and different enough to be something else.

Just because you are an Interaction Designer doesn't mean that you have to design everything that any Interaction Designer has ever designed. Your focus is computer software, as is mine. But if an Interaction Designer ends up specializing in power tools, she's still an Interaction Designer and is still a welcome part of this organization.

So how would the IxDA support the two people, practically speaking? The breadth and depth of the various design problems in those two examples are rather significant. I can see how an organization could support any type of designer, speaking academically or from a more theoretical vantage point. But when it comes down to providing content, training, education, career paths, conferences, certifications... How would the IxDA or any organization handle such a diverse membership?

-- Andrei Herasimchuk

Principal, Involution Studios
innovating the digital world

e. andrei at involutionstudios.com
c. +1 408 306 6422

Hi folks,

Bringing this thread back to its origins...I think the UPA Body of Knowledge is really impressive and great, and wanted to thank the poster. I especially appreciate their pointing to us (IxDA) for Design.

I also think that IxDA really needs to put some aspects of IxD practice into writing and resolve some of the debates raging in our discipline. Witness...this thread! : )

I wrote Robert separately to volunteer, so count me in on the efforts. Let's put some stakes in the ground together....

Cheers,
Liz

P.S. I actually don't see any really big differences between Andrei's statements and the positions of all the IxD practitioners I know & love. To me personally, interaction design has to involve a digital dimension, but IxD solutions could involve both products and services. Artifacts are secondary; its fundamental tenets and considerations are conceptual in nature yet its fundamental practice and application must consider form.

About a year ago I approached the IxDA board because I had a project in mind. After a long discussion we agreed on calling it the IxDA Practice Guide and I volunteered to lead the efforts.

The main objectives are to consolidate the processes and design language we use by gathering feedback on the different approaches being used out there.

I come from an Architecture background and I felt that the Interaction Design community needed something similar to what Architects have: a standard, yet flexible process and visual language that enables them to design something and then communicating it with anyone around the world. I can design a building and send it to a Japanese builder and he can pretty much figure it out.

Throughout my career I worked in several different companies and every one of them had its own process and visual language and that struck me as insane. For instance, programming languages are standard. Just imagine if they changed according to the company you worked for. I feel we are all trying to reinvent the wheel, when we should be focusing on the design itself.

The UPA BoK is a very interesting project, but I feel that we as Interaction Designers need something more design-related.

Since Jesse James Garrett was the first one to develop a visual language for interactions, I already invited him to oversee the groups efforts.

Also, I think that this Definitions effort would fit the scope of the Practice Guide Workgroup. There's already a Wiki setup for it at practiceguide.ixda.org (needs finishing) and the email address is practiceguide at ixda.org.

I would welcome everyone's help on this.

Posted from the new ixda.org
http://www.ixda.org/discuss?post=24685

Seriously Andrei, you are saying that in order to be an interaction designer, the designer has to have the skills to code the prototype? Or, if they had someone else build the code, they really did not design it?

On Jan 20, 2008, at 2:09 AM, Andrei Herasimchuk wrote:

I would expect it to look a lot like the IDEO shopping cart episode of 60 minutes. Most of the time would be given to research, ideation, and mockups, with the high-fidelity prototype being churned out in the last 10 minutes for the finale. As long as the interaction designer is actually building and/or coding that prototype with their own two hands — which includes the presentation and aesthetic of it among other things — then I'm agreement. Now the question would probably be... who else would agree with that? Or would you disagree with [trim]

Andrei, you lost me completely with this:
As long as the interaction designer is actually building and/or coding that prototype with their own two hands — which includes

the
presentation and aesthetic of it among other things — then I'm agreement. Now the question would probably be... who else would

agree
with that? Or would you disagree with me on those qualifications,

and
would need to ask a different question?

This is akin to saying that a graphic designer, needs to do the typesetting and the film production, which we all know except for a few major control freaks they don't.

To bring in another metaphor, how many architects do their own plumbing or electrical, or even put up their own dry-wall? Uh! NONE!

Andrei has asked what do we design?
Well I see this akin to movie making where there are many roles that take shape well off the film process:

Screen writer really comes to mind as the analog for interaction designer as narrative writer.

The screen writer usually is not a cinematographer or editor or actor or production artist, but he/she lays the foundation from which they apply their own particular skills too.

I'm starting to feel that you Andrei are embuing your ideal with practice into a definition of IxD or even interface design that may not be as fundamental as you would hope.

Too many great design organizations work quite differently from your model for me to just jump in and say every interface designer or IxD needs to be daVinci.

Its work for you. Admirably so, but I find this detail of practice to be similar to the way that 37Signals try to generalize their success model into something that works on anything other than "what we build for ourselves" (which is their mantra). It doesn't and it can't. The same holds true for what I read in your postings here. It works for you, as an individual, but methods and practice are always organizationally contextually sensitive and variant and well, because of such can't be used to define that discipline. That's why design schools concentrate on fundamentals of line & form as foundational classes first and then teach process and methods afterwards. The latter is a variant or preference, but the former is required regardless of those variants.

-- dave

Posted from the new ixda.org
http://www.ixda.org/discuss?post=24685

- Before we get started re-inventing the wheel, let's find out what others have said.

Hence my suggestion to start by looking for existing definitions to discuss (among the team members).

- I think that focused discussion is an important part of this type of initiative. I am a great fan of wikis but there is a lot of value in talking about the issues — not just revision.

Hence my suggestion to toss the definitions out to the list for feedback and discussion.

: )

-r-

The UPA has been working on a project to define a Usability Body of Knowledge (BoK) since 2004. You can review a definition for UCD and many other common terms at http://www.usabilitybok.org/ in the Glossary section. We also have sections for Methods, Design and other subjects.

The definition of UCD from UPA's Body of Knowledge glossary:

"An approach or philosophy that emphasizes early and continuous involvement of users in the design and evaluation process"

This definition is hardly fulfilling. If UCD could be wrapped up in a single sentence, we wouldn't be having this debate every week in the first place.

-r-

I think we should "own" the design of interfaces.

In making this statement, is your intent to exclude all the other things we do? This statement alone would mean we're nothing more than "interface designers", and one can easily design an interface without any of the other aspects of this profession.

-r-

I'm saying that ideation is more powerful part of the whole than the craft. If I can also guide and challenge the craft and validate it and define how it should come out, than the crafts person then becomes a chisel weilded by me, or becomes a partner engaged in the same level of creative composition from our mutually different areas of expertise.

You should consider rewording this description before you broadcast it anywhere else. It's self-important and a bit demeaning to anyone working under you.

-r-

On Jan 20, 2008, at 1:23 PM, Robert Hoekman, Jr. wrote:

The definition of UCD from UPA's Body of Knowledge glossary: "An approach or philosophy that emphasizes early and continuous involvement of users in the design and evaluation process" This definition is hardly fulfilling. If UCD could be wrapped up in a single sentence, we wouldn't be having this debate every week in the first place.

You're on a snark hunt ( http://tinyurl.com/27uzen ).

You won't find a definition because it doesn't exist.

Jared

Jared M. Spool
User Interface Engineering
510 Turnpike St., Suite 102, North Andover, MA 01845 e: jspool at uie.com p: +1 978 327 5561
http://uie.com Blog: http://uie.com/brainsparks

On Jan 20, 2008, at 7:44 AM, dave malouf wrote:

This is akin to saying that a graphic designer, needs to do the typesetting and the film production, which we all know except for a few major control freaks they don't.

To answer both questions from Dave and Mark, many graphic designers when getting trained in design school learned how to use a typesetting machine. Once they get established, they no longer need to do that. With the computer, they are now the typesetter as well for what's that worth.

With prototyping, at Involution, we have front-end developers doing the majority of the code for prototyping. This is because of all the issues of time and project schedules and how much clients are willing to pay. But the expectation is that our designers know how to both to understand what can and can't be done (the can't be done is often more important than the can be done) and to have the an appreciation of what it takes to make it happen so they can affect proper direction of the overall design. To be able to do either of those they need to understand how to prototype.

Don't mistake the practical constraints of having designers focus on the design so others do the prototyping from not having to have the skills to do so in the first place.

On Project Runway, those designers make their clothes. When it comes to working at a place like The Gap to make clothes, other people do. The point is that those designers know how to. Not that they have to do it all of the time.

That's why design schools concentrate on fundamentals of line & form as foundational classes first and then teach process and methods afterwards. The latter is a variant or preference, but the former is required regardless of those variants.

I agree with this, so I'm not sure what the difference is between us. Our current design education in this field barely does the former and completely ignores that latter. Most people coming out of education programs have all sorts of great theory, but not many of them know how to build things with that theory. Don't you think that's a big problem?

-- Andrei Herasimchuk

Principal, Involution Studios
innovating the digital world

e. andrei at involutionstudios.com
c. +1 408 306 6422

I think we should "own" the design of interfaces.

In making this statement, is your intent to exclude all the other things we do?

Not at all. I believe the interactive design “process” is, and should be, a rich and varied process which includes a wide variety of approaches, practices, skill sets, etc.

Similarly, the architectural design process has many approaches (from the user-centered – such as Christopher Alexander’s “Pattern Language”, to the Frank Lloyd Wright design-from-inspiration approach), many practices (skyscrapers, landscape, public spaces, residential, commercial) and skill sets (draftsmen, designers, researchers etc. – the usual span of skills required for a team process).

But there is no question in the average person’s mind that all the approaches, practices and skill sets involved dovetail for the purpose of designing buildings.

If one takes a giant step back from our profession, one can see that all design processes, ours included, that require a team (architecture, industrial design, advertising, mechanical design, all come to mind), tend to develop specialties. And the specialties tend to follow the same pattern: the design team needs to know who the design is for and what it needs to accomplish, what are the budgets and materials (whether steel or code) that the team has to work with, and to have an iterative design process that methodically integrates input and critique.

We would be naïve to think that interaction design/usability/experience design is solving completely new problems. Rather, I would say, interaction design/usability/experience design is solving the same problems as architecture and industrial design has to solve, but we are solving the problems within the medium of digital interfaces.

Again, if we take a giant step back from our profession and compare it to other team design processes you will see many similarities across the methodologies employed – but the one thing that stands out as the difference between our profession and architecture is the medium we apply our design process to – interfaces.

So, I advocate that we embrace that defining difference – the medium – in order to differentiate ourselves from other design disciplines.

The other path is to define interactive design as an approach (with specific practices) that can be applied to the design of nearly everything. I understand and appreciate that this is a valid way to view and promote interaction design. My concern about that direction is that interaction design could simply become a trend that passes, and is passed up and made irrelevant by a newer more trendy approach.

Approaches come and go – but the medium is here to stay. Architecture constantly evolves (new practices, new approaches, new materials, new challenges) but the medium – buildings – remains the central purpose of the profession.

I am advocating that we move forward with the aim to establish in the average person’s mind that all the approaches, practices and skill sets involved in interactive design dovetail for the purpose of designing interfaces that facilitate rich interaction. Those interfaces can reside on the dash board of a car, the handle bar of a really cool lawn mower, a mobile device, a refrigerator door, or a computer – but the commonality is that they all have interfaces that allow rich interaction.

Joseph Selbie

Founder, CEO Tristream

Web Application Design

http://www.tristream.com

"how many architects do their own plumbing or electrical, or even put up their own dry-wall? Uh! NONE!"

Yes, you're right. But they need to know where they go and how they can be fitted otherwise the building they're designing might not be feasible.

And that's the same thing I think about Interaction Designers. For instance, I know how to code and program but I don't consider myself a prof. I know hoe to do graphic design but again I'm not exceptional at that. But I feel that I am a better IxD because I know these.

Posted from the new ixda.org
http://www.ixda.org/discuss?post=24685

Andrei Herasimchuk wrote:

Don't mistake the practical constraints of having designers focus on the design so others do the prototyping from not having to have the skills to do so in the first place.

I believe that having the skills to create the prototype, in whatever form it may take, will make you a better Interaction Designer than you would be without those skills. I certainly consider them to be critical to my own success. However, I don't believe the lack of those skills necessarily results in a poor IxDer. Nor do I believe that lack of those skills relegates someone to being a less talented IxDer than one with those skills.

How do you go about designing those things on a lawnmower? Or at least the "interaction" of those things? I ask because I honestly couldn't tell you! Ask me how to design a painting tool with a Wacom input device using a tablet computing system with a wireless connection, and I could design you a tool that if it had the right pixel processing engine under it could allow an artist to sit in the park and paint like they they might with a real canvas and set of paints. How would I design the safety features on [trim]

I've worked with customers in several different industries. Each time I started, I didn't know the domain. I didn't know how to design the safety features on the lawnmower. My design process, however, gave me a confident starting point. I learned about the workers, their problems, their tasks, etc. and was able to design solutions that helped them.

Part of picking a career as either a graphic designer or an industrial designer is because one wants to design the things those fields specialize in. How does someone go to college and pick a degree in designing anything as long as it has a "behavioral" component. Doesn't everything have that? And if so, what exactly does it mean?

This reminds me of a story that Dan Boyarski, currently chair of the School of Design at CMU, told us about a young girl who when asked what she wanted to be when she grew up said, "I want to be a designer of everything!" Unrealistic? Yes, most likely. But what I was taught there prepared me for more than just designing computer software. I only had one semester-long course on "interface design". That's not to say that I wasn't doing interface design in other courses, but that was the only one that declared it as the true focus of the course. If you learn design processes and how to apply them to problems, that gets you a long way towards "designing everything as long as it has a "behavioral" component."

Personally, I think there's plenty to do with digital and software. Does that mean I think working on power tools is inferior? No. I just think it's different, and different enough to be something else.

So you would rather that we be the Software Interaction Design Association or Digital Interaction Design Association. I'd prefer we remain more inclusive than that. What's to keep someone else from saying that designing software for mobile phones is different— different enough to be something else?

So how would the IxDA support the two people, practically speaking? The breadth and depth of the various design problems in those two examples are rather significant. I can see how an organization could support any type of designer, speaking academically or from a more theoretical vantage point. But when it comes down to providing content, training, education, career paths, conferences, certifications... How would the IxDA or any organization handle such a diverse membership?

I guess we're just going to disagree. I don't see it as being any different. Again, to reference my alma mater, at CMU, the Communication Designers and Industrial Designers start off taking the same foundation courses. Eventually they decide which area they want to focus on and take domain specific courses, but the organization, the School of Design, supports them both.

Jack

Jack L. Moffett
Interaction Designer
inmedius
412.459.0310 x219
http://www.inmedius.com

My goal is to build elegant products.
The products that don't make people think
when they should be doing,
make people think
when they should be learning,
compel them by relating to them,
and simply work.

- Robert Hoekman, Jr.

Seriously, guys, can you make this any more difficult?

As a writer/editor, may I suggest something that may help advance this beyond the realm of philosophy? (please say yes)

Write a definition that suits you. Better yet, write a definition that you love. Keep it short. Hoist it up the flagpole. Let us all shoot holes in it or salute it.

Then move on to definition # 2. Lather, rinse, repeat.

Just a thought. Carry on!

Posted from the new ixda.org
http://www.ixda.org/discuss?post=24685

Andrei:
"I agree with this, so I'm not sure what the difference is between us. Our current design education in this field barely does the former and completely ignores that latter. Most people coming out of education programs have all sorts of great theory, but not many of them know how to build things with that theory. Don't you think that's a big problem?"

yup, I do think that IxD education formal and informal is for shit. I want a program that concentratres on fundamentals/foundations, is design studio driven, and teaches craft. I'm thinking a 3yr. masters or 5 year bachelors like many ID programs are today. This is one of my bigger issues I believe IxDA should take on right now. (I got an article about it, looking for a publisher, and everything.)

To Bruno's point. Knowing the fundamentals of databases and being able to program SQL statements are two different things (by your comparison with plumbing.

Andrei has said on numerous occasions that interface designers should know code. Know it, not just know what the technology can do, but to be able to do it themselves.
Maybe not at a production level, but still at some level.

I do believe that prototyping (interactive prototypes) is essential to communicating interactive systems design. But as my world gains in complexity, not only would I need to be able to do a plastics appearance model with real snap domes, but at the same time on the same project, I'll need to be able to code in Visual Studio and have it run in Windows Mobile for me to do my job.

We need to learn to create partnerships and delegate through a process of shared vision.

Andrei mentioned the IDEO project. We all know that the people doing the sketching didn't do the lathe work. They had a team of mechanical engineers and shop people who really did the work overnight of building the prototypes. They say so in the clip. Yes, that psychologist was able to do the mechanics on that cart, I'm sure.

Working in deep collaboration, knowing your expertise in the foundations that you have gone deep in, while broadly understanding the constraints and advantages of the total system you are designing for is key.

-- dave

Posted from the new ixda.org
http://www.ixda.org/discuss?post=24685

If I can make just a couple of analogies...

Having an understanding of how a printing press puts dots on paper will help me make better production files, and may in fact help me avoid some pitfalls in designing a brochure that can not be printed, but I do not think it amounts to making me a better designer.

I understand how photoshop deals with files - at least the math and pixel stuff. I had a cohort that knew the tolerance curves for film at a level that he could exploit long exposures. That sort of knowledge will never make for a great photographer, but will make us better technicians.

Understanding the limits of the final medium is of course important. The coding of a prototype will no make me better designer unless of course you consider it as it applies to final code, and that you consider the coding as part of the design process. I do not. That is production, not design. Agreeing on when a process moves from design to production is likely critical to our agreeing on this issue.

Mark

On Jan 20, 2008, at 12:39 PM, Mark Schraad wrote:

Having an understanding of how a printing press puts dots on paper will help me make better production files, and may in fact help me avoid some pitfalls in designing a brochure that can not be printed, but I do not think it amounts to making me a better designer.

Sure, talent makes you better designer. But at the same time, given an equal amount of talent, the one that understands how to use the letterpress is the better graphic designer, right?

Further... learning how to use a typesetting machine or a letterpress is not just about understanding how it puts ink on paper. Anyone who has ever had a chance to craft a poster using one will tell you it's about learning craft in a way that is impossible otherwise. There's so much more about graphic design that makes so much more sense when you have to not only draw something but actually make it real with your own two hands. Doing so gives you an entirely new world view on what it takes to both build and design. That's the larger issue at play.

-- Andrei Herasimchuk

Principal, Involution Studios
innovating the digital world

e. andrei at involutionstudios.com
c. +1 408 306 6422

Andrei said: But if you mean anything that has to do with how the software or digital aspects of the Razr work, then absolutely. This includes finding ways to work with the hardware components that would drive interacting with the underlying software or code.

And that's largely the distinction I make. As long as it touches the code portion of the product, thats where I think it becomes digital design, interaction design, interface design, or whatever we all finally wind up calling it.

There are a number of industrial designers in IxDA, as well as Interaction Designers who work in Industrial and Product Design studios, who work on interaction aspects of products which don't necessarily have digital or code-related natures.

"Interaction Design" as I've practiced it since the early 1980s (and others have as well) includes everything associated with usage and operational patterns. This can, and often does mean "digital" or interaction with the "code" portions of electronic products, but for me it also includes things like how blood sample contains are loaded into an analyzer. This is human interaction, and in my generalist, whole-product design approach, this is about interaction.

I also just want to say right now at the start that I'll strongly oppose the inclusion of Dan Saffer's term, "Genius Design, " for a range of reasons.

1) It's not a term that I can imagine ANYBODY would consider applying to themselves, let alone accurately describing or expressing what's actually at the heart of what the term proposes to label.

2) What's at the heart of what the inadequate (and I maintain, somewhat sneering) term, "genius design" proposes to label is actually a mix of:

2a) Individual or small-scale expert team design 2b) Short development schedule and/or budget timeframes 2c) Expert decisions and judgements best carried out by experienced practitioners

So let's axe the term "genius design, " right here and now. If someone or a consensus wishes to label some ultra-successful generalist or small team, or "special forces" design efforts as "genius, " or specific designers who've demonstrated significant success track records, then fine. But this is highly inadequate when it comes to the category of approach represented by the types of individuals and small groups that I describe above.

Why are these semantics important to us as a field?

For these reasons:

1) Individual or small-scale expert team design is a valid approach to design

2) Valid and successful careers can be built upon Individual or small-scale expert team design approaches

3) Many products and systems have needs (and time and budget constraints) that can be benefitted and addressed by Individual or small-scale expert team design approaches

4) Young interaction designers need to understand that they do not need to be geniuses, nor think of themselves as such, in order to progressively and gradually become proficient at Individual or small-scale expert team design, usually through apprenticeships and mentoring by those more experienced.

Jim

James Leftwich, IDSA
CXO - Chief Experience Officer
SeeqPod, Inc.
Emeryville, California
http://www.seeqpod.com

Orbit Interaction
Palo Alto, California
http://www.orbitnet.com

Posted from the new ixda.org
http://www.ixda.org/discuss?post=24685

Amen.

-r-

Sent from my iPhone.

On Jan 20, 2008, at 12:32 PM, Jeff Seager abrojos at hotmail.com wrote:

Seriously, guys, can you make this any more difficult? As a writer/editor, may I suggest something that may help advance this beyond the realm of philosophy? (please say yes) Write a definition that suits you. Better yet, write a definition that you love. Keep it short. Hoist it up the flagpole. Let us all shoot holes in it or salute it. Then move on to definition # 2. Lather, rinse, repeat. Just a thought. Carry on! Posted from the new ixda.org http://www.ixda.org/discuss?post=24685 *Come to IxDA Interaction08 | Savannah* February [trim]

Also, I want to hasten to add that by objecting to the term, "genius design, " I'm in no way objecting to Dan Saffer's excellent book and work. Nor am I objecting to his attempt to describe this generally different approach to design.

I think "Designing For Interaction" is a major positive accomplishment and contribution to our field.

I simply think that this specific term is inadequate, and potentially misleading and subject to being construed as pejorative.

In mountain climbing there's the term used to describe the style of climbing that Reinhold Messner and Peter Habeler used (climbing without oxygen or fixed ropes) - "Alpine Style."

Our field needs a similarly non-judgemental term to describe rapid, expert, intuitive, informed design that doesn't imply some superhuman or extraordinary individual qualities.

The style that Dan describes in his book does not stem from being born with all the experience and innate genius necessary to practice this approach. It's a skill that must be learned and honed over years, and informed by constant and widespread awareness of developments in the field, other successful models (even when not directly in the same domain), and probably a penchant for being a generalist and enjoying some level of measured risk and pressure.

And this approach is very much in the service of the "user, " and that's why I, personally, dislike the term, "user-centered design, " as it implies that other approaches are not aimed at or centered around the benefit of the end users. This is simply not true.

Our field is rife with a wide range of inadequately tested assumptions and prejudices based on both predominant approaches of the largest groups of practictioners as well as extreme unfamiliarity with the complexities and nuances of other valid approaches to Interaction Design.

It's my belief that our field will benefit most from avoiding hard categorical definitions, and instead embrace the diversity of approaches and combinations of pursuits inherent among our wide range of pracitioners.

These definition efforts always run the risk of leading to more unnecessary restriction than enlightnment and usefully expansive inclusion.

Posted from the new ixda.org
http://www.ixda.org/discuss?post=24685

My objection to Dan's term is merely one of semantics. I think there is reason to capture (or name) a design process that proceeds unabated by research because the designer or designers have extensive domain knowledge - or embody the needs of the end user. And I am not sure that deserves the 'genius' label. The other aspect that is implied here is the singular vision for the deliverable - which is valuable in focus and efficiency of process.

Mark

On Jan 20, 2008, at 10:20 AM, Jim Leftwich wrote:

I also just want to say right now at the start that I'll strongly oppose the inclusion of Dan Saffer's term, "Genius Design, " for a range of reasons. 1) It's not a term that I can imagine ANYBODY would consider applying to themselves, let alone accurately describing or expressing what's actually at the heart of what the term proposes to label. 2) What's at the heart of what the inadequate (and I maintain, somewhat sneering) term, "genius design" proposes to label is actually a mix of: 2a) Individual or small-scale expert team design [trim]

In mountain climbing there's the term used to describe the style of climbing that Reinhold Messner and Peter Habeler used (climbing without oxygen or fixed ropes) - "Alpine Style."

And nobody outside of climbing knows what that means. So is the benefit of the term to differentiate to experts or convey to lay audiences? By defining a new term, the world has to be educated on it's meaning, who is to bear the responsibility of that?

And this approach is very much in the service of the "user, " and that's why I, personally, dislike the term, "user-centered design, " as it implies that other approaches are not aimed at or centered around the benefit of the end users. This is simply not true.

I disagree. I To me it's not describing the end benefit, every successful product benefits end users (sometimes by accident sometimes by intention), but rather the approach that needs of the end user (and often very specific workflows) are considered first and high in the proriorites, vrs:
a) feature centric design, the let's expose everything we can possibly do in the ui
b) technology centric design, what new possibilities can we do with innovation? (e.g often pushing the boundaries of what users think they need).

Troy

Let me quote what Tog says in his article on the subject of Interaction Design
http://www.asktog.com/columns/057ItsTimeWeGotRespect.html . He is talking about the founding of this organization and he refers to the article as "The most important I have ever written" and I suspect he has some insight into what the original view of the audience of this group was.

It's Time We Got Respect
October, 2003 Update

Organizing the new group is underway. Challis Hodge, David Heller, Jim Jarrett, Rick Cecil have formed a steering committee and the first discussions, centered on the new name of our profession, have taken place.

The concensus for the name of our profession is "Interaction Designer." One compelling reason for chosing this name, rather than the "Interaction Architect" I had proposed is that a growing number of jurisdictions forbid the use of the name "architect" by anyone other than a building designer. It is also confusingly similar in sound to "Information Architect, " a title already in wide-spread use.

I am quite happy with the result. It was never my intention to thrust a name upon the group, but rather to launch a debate.

Visit the new group to find out what is happening and to get involved.

I highly recommend reading the rest of the article. He has quite a lot to say on the question of the name and what practitioners the group was intended to represent. Much of it is particularly pertinent in connection with the question of What UCD Is and therefore Who We Are.

Katie --

Katie Albers
katie at firstthought.com

Since I've eared about IxD, I have imagined the design of the invisible, maybe,
the optimisation of reaction moment.

Pedro Soares Neves
userdesign.org

Posted from the new ixda.org
http://www.ixda.org/discuss?post=24685

UCD makes me think about participation...

Pedro Soares Neves
userdesign.org

Posted from the new ixda.org
http://www.ixda.org/discuss?post=24685

Thanks for that, Katie. Well worth keeping. The period ending Katie's first sentence got tangled up in the link, so if/when you get a 404 Not Found error, delete the period at the end of the URI or use this link instead:

http://www.asktog.com/columns/057ItsTimeWeGotRespect.html

Posted from the new ixda.org
http://www.ixda.org/discuss?post=24685

On Jan 20, 2008, at 4:44 PM, Mark Schraad wrote:

My objection to Dan's term is merely one of semantics. I think there is reason to capture (or name) a design process that proceeds unabated by research because the designer or designers have extensive domain knowledge - or embody the needs of the end user. And I am not sure that deserves the 'genius' label.

I'll explain why I chose the name, even though Jim and I have been over this extensively before.

http://www.well.com/conf /inkwell.vue /topics /283 /Dan -Saffer -Designing -for -Interac -page01.html http://lists.whatwg.org/pipermail /discuss -interactiondesigners.com /2006 -October /012084.html

When I set out to write the four approaches to interaction design, I had the same problem this thread has been having all along: how do we distinguish user-centered design from other types of (interaction) design philosophies?

The other three approaches I ended up calling out were activity- centered design, systems design, and what I ended up naming genius design. Activity-centered design and systems design were well-defined and had been named previously, but the last approach needed some sort of title, so I gave it Genius Design; not sneeringly, I should add. I've noted repeatedly I use genius design as an approach all the time. And like all the approaches, it has its pluses and minuses. I don't use UCD all the time either. Or ACD. (I have been accused of having ADD however.)

I chose the term "genius" not because of great intelligence or skill (although both help when designing in this manner) but because of the personal nature of the approach and how it was similar to how the 19th century "geniuses" like Edison worked. (This is mostly legend, I know.) I could have called it designer-centered design, but that seemed, well, terrible.

You can object to the term, but that horse might have left the stable and you might have to let it go eventually. I see it all over this list and elsewhere now. Heck, even Jakob Nielsen has used it:

http://www.useit.com/alertbox/genius-designers.html

But I'm a little tired of the semantics debate. We should prototype the messaging around our discipline on a wiki and be done with it, rather than have these debates crop up year after year.

Dan

Dan Saffer, M.Des., IDSA
Experience Design Director, Adaptive Path
http://www.adaptivepath.com
http://www.odannyboy.com

For sure this is a bit tedious. But if we are to unify our message of value, like any good academian, we should define our terms. Many of the conversations here go on for weeks before the two side figure out they agree on everything but the definition of a critical term. Dan - you penned an incredibly important approach to design - called it out and named it. A year after you book - I can not use the term unless I am talking to someone on this forum. Instead I tend to use ego- centric design because the uninitiated know immediately what I am talking about. These definitions will be the building blocks to our message. Our audience will not have the same opportunity for dialog or background. The message will need to be clear simple and normalized.

But if there is traction and the genius debate is over - so be it.

Mark

On Jan 21, 2008, at 2:44 AM, Dan Saffer wrote:

But I'm a little tired of the semantics debate. We should prototype the messaging around our discipline on a wiki and be done with it, rather than have these debates crop up year after year. Dan

Are you sure? It seems like a good definition to me - it doesn't mandate usability testing or the use of personas, etc, it simply focuses on the concept of involving users throughout the design process. That is what IxDA members seem to be confused about - how many times have we heard someone say they think UCD mandates usability testing, the use of personas, thinking that UCD doesn't care about things like business goals or technology limitations, etc?. I'm just not sure if the problem is one of definition, or simply that many folks don't really understand what UCD is to begin with - it seems that a lot of people make false assumptions about the practice.

Jeff

On Jan 20, 2008 1:23 PM, Robert Hoekman, Jr. robert at rhjr.net wrote: The UPA has been working on a project to define a Usability Body of Knowledge (BoK) since 2004. You can review a definition for UCD and many other common terms at http://www.usabilitybok.org/ in the Glossary section. We also have sections for Methods, Design and other subjects. The definition of UCD from UPA's Body of Knowledge glossary: "An approach or philosophy that emphasizes early and continuous involvement of users in the design and evaluation process" This definition is hardly fulfilling. If UCD could be wrapped up in a single sentence, we wouldn't be having this debate every week in [trim]

This thread seems to have run its course, but just wanted to quickly share a link to my blog (www.ghostinthepixel.com) where I'm re-capping the "CMU approach to design" (Carnegie Mellon Univ) which folks like Jeff Howard, Jack Moffet, Dan Saffer, Jon Kolko, and myself come from. This may help clarify where some of us come from in terms of interpreting "interaction design" as a field of thought and practice.

(note: Dan Saffer kept an excellent account of his CMU design days online; mine is "after a few years in the field" before i forget it all :-)

This particular post offers a summary of core ideas and definitions, drawn from the writings of Dick Buchanan:

http://www.ghostinthepixel.com/?p=88

"Interaction design emerged in contemporary consciousness around problems of the digital medium and the relationship between people and computers. However, interaction design has greater significance than its application to the digital products that increasingly surround us and influence our lives. Interaction design offers new insight into visual communication, physical artifacts, activities and services, and the systems and environments within which all products exist." — R. Buchanan, PhD.

I hope this contribution helps. (or if not, at least now you'll see where some of us are coming from, and why we think the way we do :-) Enjoy!

Uday Gajendar,
Senior Designer
Involution Studios LLC

All,

If this helps in understanding what is already out there, the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society has a collection of HF and related definitions on their site at

http://www.hfes.org/Web /EducationalResources /HFEdefinitionsmain.html

Michele Marut

Language can express our ideas and ideals in a way that's readily understood and inclusive to the general population, or it can isolate us in a world of specialized jargon. A decision should be made about which is most important to the group — promoting a broader understanding, or inventing language that better satisfies the needs of the specialist.

I'm for the former, and I think that's in line with the founding principles of this group. But it's not a "right or wrong" decision, just a decision. And like all decisions, it has consequences.

I agree with Mark: "These definitions will be the building blocks to our message. Our audience will not have the same opportunity for dialog or background. The message will need to be clear simple and normalized."

Posted from the new ixda.org
http://www.ixda.org/discuss?post=24685

Here's a model definition that I love for its brevity and clarity, from the weblink Michele has just posted:

"Human Factors is concerned with the application of what we know about people, their abilities, characteristics, and limitations to the design of equipment they use, environments in which they function, and jobs they perform."

There are other reasonable definitions of the same term that aren't as satisfying to me. One thing I really like about this one is the simple language. Another is "the application of what we know ..." because what we know will change with time and practice. That's a nice touch.

On the other hand, I'd clarify the same definition by rewriting it like this: "Human Factors [as applied to design, engineering ...] considers what we know about people — their abilities, characteristics and limitations — and applies that knowledge to the design of equipment they use, environments in which they function, and jobs they perform."

User-center design may be described or defined as a subset of that. You can think of others. Not that there need be a hierarchy as such, but such structure helps with comprehension, acceptance and adoption. Those three factors are as important to me as accuracy, where definitions are concerned.

We have a lot in common with related disciplines, and a willingness to adopt longstanding definitions only adds to our credibility. We need not reinvent the wheel if we can just shave off some of the rough edges.

Posted from the new ixda.org
http://www.ixda.org/discuss?post=24685

Are you sure? It seems like a good definition to me

I've seen whiteboard notes that were more comprehensive.

That is what IxDA members seem to be confused about - how many times have we heard someone say they think UCD mandates usability testing, the use of personas, thinking that UCD doesn't care about things like business goals or technology limitations, etc?.

The definition of UCD should include discussion of how it's practiced. Same for ACD, and so on. The method of practice is the key distinction between these approaches. Without these differences, they're all just .... interchangeable words.

-r-

I'm not sure if this has been mentioned in this mega-thread, but...

I've been involved recently in writing descriptions for activities like usability testing and one thing that makes such a definition difficult is that the optimal definition varies by audience. A definition that appeases the experts (us) is not necessarily going to be helpful to someone who knows very little about the subject.

Paul

On Mon, 21 Jan 2008 09:58:26, Jeff Seager abrojos at hotmail.com wrote:

Here's a model definition that I love for its brevity and clarity, from the weblink Michele has just posted: "Human Factors is concerned with the application of what we know about people, their abilities, characteristics, and limitations to the design of equipment they use, environments in which they function, and jobs they perform." There are other reasonable definitions of the same term that aren't as satisfying to me. One thing I really like about this one is the simple language. Another is "the application of what we know ..." because what we know will change with time [trim]

Dan Saffer wrote:

You can object to the term, but that horse might have left the stable and you might have to let it go eventually. I see it all over this list and elsewhere now. Heck, even Jakob Nielsen has used it:

http://www.useit.com/alertbox/genius-designers.html

But I'm a little tired of the semantics debate. We should prototype the messaging around our discipline on a wiki and be done with it, rather than have these debates crop up year after year.

- - -

No horse has left any barn. I fundamentally disagree with the notion of a process being either user-centric or designer-centric. This is just so oversimplified as to be misleading. All good design is done in the service to the product and the end user. And no one process or approach owns user-centricity.

As for the importance of whether Jakob Nielsen has repeated this term, well, I would disagree that this means the matter is settled.

I suppose I can understand why someone coining a term would like to see the debate over and done with, but it's not quite that simple.

As long as loaded terminology is employed (and let's be honest - there is much rhetorical loading to a great deal of the terminology and labels used in the design field), we will have disagreement. These debates are going to continue to crop up, as long as terminology such as "genius design, " and "ego-centric" are used to label individual or small expert team efforts that don't incorporate what's being labeled "user-centered design."

Posted from the new ixda.org
http://www.ixda.org/discuss?post=24685

On Jan 21, 2008, at 11:45 AM, Jim Leftwich wrote:

No horse has left any barn. I fundamentally disagree with the notion of a process being either user-centric or designer-centric. This is just so oversimplified as to be misleading. All good design is done in the service to the product and the end user. And no one process or approach owns user-centricity.

You are now confusing intent with approach. All good design intends to benefit the user. The differences we're speaking of are the approaches, all of which can be used to create this benefit. "User- centric design" is a technical term to describe a set of methods and a philosophy, not just that the designer intends to help the user. (Duh.)

As I have also pointed out in the book and elsewhere, the different approaches can all be used on the same project at different times. I'm agnostic about the approach—all four have their merits and flaws. I know I drift frequently between genius design, UCD, and ACD. I'd argue the best designers are those that can do this sort of shifting between approaches, in fact. Rigid ideology causes you to lose tools in your toolkit.

As for the importance of whether Jakob Nielsen has repeated this term, well, I would disagree that this means the matter is settled.

It's not only Jakob. I was mostly kidding about his using it, although it does signify the term has moved beyond the core community here. The more important point is that the term has been adopted and used by the IxD community. Nothing better has been proposed, codified or adopted.

I suppose I can understand why someone coining a term would like to see the debate over and done with, but it's not quite that simple.

You are free to write your own book and coin your own terms. : )

These debates are going to continue to crop up, as long as terminology such as "genius design, " and "ego-centric" are used to label individual or small expert team efforts that don't incorporate what's being labeled "user-centered design."

As I stated above, the term UCD implies a core set of methods (generative user research being the core of the core IMHO). This isn't to say that practitioners who use the other approaches don't care about users or serving their needs, just that they don't go about that in a way that is traditionally called user-centered design.

Dan

One test of the validity of any label to a particular approach is whether or not groups of practitioners can reasonably be expected to apply it to themselves and advocate it as part of their offering.

I highly doubt any designers that work in individual, small expert team, rapid style would hold out their approach to the field and potential clients or companies as "genius design, " or "ego-centric."

This is at the heart of why both of these labels fail, even if you are willing to apply them to the approach you say you use from time to time.

You are not fully describing the complex set of approaches that experienced non-UCD-practicing designers utilize and advocate for many real-world situations. The section of your book on "genius design" is a fraction of the size and depth of the other methodologies you describe.

I concur that most design efforts overlap Expert-Rapid/ACD/UCD.

I'll advocate "Expert-Rapid Design" as it's descriptive of both what's necessary to employ such an approach and the time-constraints found in many real-world situations that generally lead to its use. It's a non-judgemental, psychologically-centric, or "anti-term" (coined by advocates of other, implied "better" methodologies), and can be legitimately advocated in a variety of real-world situations.

It would be intersting to give UCD and ERD practitioners the same project, (say a medical device) with a small budget and extreme time constraints and see the results in the finished product.

Posted from the new ixda.org
http://www.ixda.org/discuss?post=24685

if the cow really has left the silo, maybe call it GD to take some of the sting out of the word "genius"
but them that may imply, uh... Guru Design? God Design? Gut Design?

But mybe it hasn't. So... well, "auteur design" since one person is judge, jury, and executioner? or "shoestring design" because you're making do with what you've got in your head.?

Intuitive design? (ducking)

Experience design? (taken by another meaning)

Expert design? that's a bit less loaded but still fairly accurate.

—xian

On Mon, 21 Jan 2008 12:41:35, Jim Leftwich jleft at orbitnet.com wrote:

I highly doubt any designers that work in individual, small expert team, rapid style would hold out their approach to the field and potential clients or companies as "genius design, " or "ego-centric."

Maybe "rapid design"

I'll advocate "Expert-Rapid Design" as it's descriptive of both what's necessary to employ such an approach and the time-constraints found in many real-world situations that generally lead to its use. It's a non-judgemental, psychologically-centric, or "anti-term" (coined by advocates of other, implied "better" methodologies), and can be legitimately advocated in a variety of real-world situations.

Pick one. Both together sounds too much like "Express Rarebit Design or "Extra Rabbit Design"

It would be intersting to give UCD and ERD practitioners the same project, (say a medical device) with a small budget and extreme time constraints and see the results in the finished product.

Like that insulin pump thing Adaptive Path did? That's a great idea. How can we set it up?

—xian

-- Christian Crumlish http://xianlandia.com
Yahoo! pattern detective http://developer.yahoo.com/ypatterns IA Institute director of technology http://iainstitute.org

I advocate the non-loaded, mostly descriptive Expert Rapid Design (ERD).

Guru Design, God Design are both sort of ad hominem. They're aimed at the individual, rather than the method, and as I'd laid out, you can't seriously imagine practitioners self-labeling themselves with those terms, or seriously advocating them. They right off the bat are open to unimaginable rounds of fighting and confusion.

I'm advocating an actual, legitimate, viable, and often necessary design approach. An approach that can be learned and honed over time by a much wider variety of designers than presently practice it, or believe such a thing is possible. And it's not limited to just individuals, and is separate from the issue of ego or personality.

Posted from the new ixda.org
http://www.ixda.org/discuss?post=24685

On Jan 21, 2008, at 3:04 PM, Jim Leftwich wrote:

I advocate the non-loaded, mostly descriptive Expert Rapid Design (ERD).

Let me do you the favor of deconstructing this term the same way as has been done with Genius Design.

Expert: Expert implies greatly skilled and experienced. Do you have to be an expert to practice it? If so, how come many non-trained or beginning designers use this method (with terrible results)?

Rapid: The iPod and iPhone took several years to create using this method. Rapid according to whom?

I'm advocating an actual, legitimate, viable, and often necessary design approach.

Is anyone really questioning this? This seems like a strawman you've built up.

On Jan 21, 2008, at 12:41 PM, Jim Leftwich wrote:

One test of the validity of any label to a particular approach is whether or not groups of practitioners can reasonably be expected to apply it to themselves and advocate it as part of their offering. I highly doubt any designers that work in individual, small expert team, rapid style would hold out their approach to the field and potential clients or companies as "genius design, " or "ego-centric."

This is a strawman argument. I find it hard to believe that many designers sell themselves (or self-identify) as a "user-centered designer" or an "activity-centered designer." It's hard enough to describe "interaction designer" without getting into the intricacies of our approaches. Clients don't care about what approach we're using. Hell, by this point, most of the people on the list probably don't care about it either. In some ways and because they are so fluid, these are artificial constructs.

You are not fully describing the complex set of approaches that experienced non-UCD-practicing designers utilize and advocate for many real-world situations. The section of your book on "genius design" is a fraction of the size and depth of the other methodologies you describe.

The reason is because it is very difficult to do and is by its nature idiosyncratic and personal. And also mostly because it, unlike other approaches, does not have a core set of activities or philosophies that guide the process. There is nothing like the system diagram that systems designers turn to for guidance, or the observation of actions and tasks of the activity-centered designer, or the discovery of goals that the user-centered designer seeks to uncover.

It would be intersting to give UCD and ERD practitioners the same project, (say a medical device) with a small budget and extreme time constraints and see the results in the finished product.

What would be the point of this? You seem to think that the approaches are in conflict, and one can be judged better than the other. That's fundamentalist thinking. We should be advocates for pluralism.

Dan

On Jan 21, 2008, at 3:04 PM, Jim Leftwich wrote:

I advocate the non-loaded, mostly descriptive Expert Rapid Design (ERD).

As a first note, I'd like to say I completely concur with all of Jim's comments and viewpoints on this. I'm sure Jim is going to have to find a way to not have his jaw removed from the floor once he reads that. 8^)

Second — and this might give Jared an opening to faint as well — I don't find the distinctions between "styles of design" as it pertains to the team to be of much use at all. UCD and ERD really are both sides of the same sword as near as I can tell precisely because of many of the things Jim noted earlier. Using them as labels or as a means to define the design process will cut you equally in the pain it can bring. To that degree, I think none of those terms are of much practical use, and it's largely why I make the claim UCD is a poor approach to design if not outright incorrect.

What I do find useful, and the thing I think resonates with clients, executives, or the people who fund design, is the simple term "Research." That is to say, what is required is research, research and more research. More data and more research is never bad in my opinion. You simply can't have enough of it or enough time for time it. And by research, I mean across all facets. Design patterns, technology, feasibility, customers, market factors, trends, etc. The more I know, the more likely I am to make better design decisions in my experience. It simply cannot be silo'd to favor one aspect of what goes into a product.

It's quite clear to me that research is needed no matter how a single designer or a team approach the actual design process. When quality research is present, the final quality of the work is significantly increased than when it's not.

Given that baseline, I'm even willing to concede to let a single person or a collaborative team take a "user centered" design approach from that sort of in-depth, qualitative research vantage point, where they weigh their design decisions to favor users for whatever reason. I say this, because in my experience, once you have to weigh technology considerations and business decisions that come from concrete research and data, it's nearly impossible to favor any of them (user, technology or business) without driving yourself mad in the process. To that degree, Research is ultimate equalizer and the ultimate path to a solid foundation for any type of product design, and the very thing that often makes what comes out as a good product to being an extraordinary one.

I also believe the approach Jim is referring to often occurs from people, either as a team or on their own, who have a lot of prior experience in designing something. This experience acts as research, to the degree that their ultimate design process doesn't favor or look like "UCD". It's just works from a basis of solid, concrete knowledge about the thing they are designing.

-- Andrei Herasimchuk

Principal, Involution Studios
innovating the digital world

e. andrei at involutionstudios.com
c. +1 408 306 6422

Dan Saffer wrote:

Expert: Expert implies greatly skilled and experienced. Do you have to be an expert to practice it? If so, how come many non-trained or beginning designers use this method (with terrible results)?

.

Yes, absolutely one should be expert to the degree of design and complexity that they're attempting.

Part of the ERD model is that young designers not start right out on their own taking on projects beyond their capabilities and experience. Working with older designers is an excellent way to learn by doing, and incorporate the skills necessary to take on complex projects in this manner.

I'm not advocating this being used in the way you describe. And certainly we know that "terrible results" are achievable through the use of all so-called methodologies. It's not just the problem of ERD.

Dan Saffer wrote:

I find it hard to believe that many designers sell themselves (or self-identify) as a "user-centered designer" or an "activity-centered designer."

A Google search on "user centered designer" brings up over a thousand results. Including both self-descriptions as well as job descriptions seeking candidates.

Dan Saffer wrote:
And also mostly because it, unlike other approaches, does not have a core set of activities or philosophies that guide the process.

That's not true. It might be true that those practicing it haven't taken time out to write books, but that doesn't mean that they don't have a core set of activities and philosophies guiding their work.

And as for why a comparitive test (which may be unfeasible for other reasons) woud be valuable - it's because many have made claims that ERD approaches cannot produce successful products and systems. This is not your argument. You made this clear in your book. But you're not the only one adding to this ongoing conversation.

Dan Saffer wrote:

You seem to think that the approaches are in conflict, and one can be judged better than the other. That's fundamentalist thinking. We should be advocates for pluralism.

I'm not at all saying the approaches are in conflict. In fact, if you go back and read my previous posts you'll see I clearly stated the following:

"It's my belief that our field will benefit most from avoiding hard categorical definitions, and instead embrace the diversity of approaches and combinations of pursuits inherent among our wide range of pracitioners."

I take exception only with unhelpful and inadequately descriptive labels such as "genius design" and "ego-centric." And I favor the term Rapid Expert Design (ERD)

And that no more means that everything using that approach must be done with the same level of rapidity or expertness.

Posted from the new ixda.org
http://www.ixda.org/discuss?post=24685

Out of curiosity (I'm very confused by this thread) is the issue with "user-centered" design the fear that it's somehow ignoring biz & tech?

I've always thought about it as "generative research that fuels design" (or whatever Dan Saffer said so eloquently) where as "expert design" to me means design based on my knowledge of the user/domain as an expert, no research?

I tend to think of myself as "user-centered" in that I partner with clients, marketers, developers, engineers, etc. who tend to (over-) represent business and technology. But also because I use tools that I think of falling into that camp. Not that I don't care or know about business/tech, but it's not my "center."

The semantics here are a bit overwhelming, but differentiating "styles of design" helps me with clients often. Some problems require me to deep dive on users, others I can design for without using UCD tools. To scope a project and manage client expectations, I find it useful to educate them about the two. Sometimes. ; )

Original Message From: discuss-bounces at lists.interactiondesigners.com [mailto:discuss-bounces at lists.interactiondesigners.com] On Behalf Of Andrei Herasimchuk Sent: Monday, January 21, 2008 4:17 PM To: IxDA List Subject: Re: [IxDA Discuss] Defining UCD (and other things) On Jan 21, 2008, at 3:04 PM, Jim Leftwich wrote: I advocate the non-loaded, mostly descriptive Expert Rapid Design (ERD).

As a first note, I'd like to say I completely concur with all of Jim's comments and viewpoints on this. I'm sure Jim is going to have to find a way to not have his jaw removed from the floor once he reads that. 8^)

Second — and this might give Jared an opening to faint as well — I don't find the distinctions between "styles of design" as it pertains to the team to be of much use at all. UCD and ERD really are both sides of the same sword as near as I can tell precisely because of many of the things Jim noted earlier. Using them as labels or as a means to define the design process will cut you equally in the pain it can bring. To that degree, I think none of those terms are of much practical use, and it's largely why I make the claim UCD is a poor approach to design if not outright incorrect.

What I do find useful, and the thing I think resonates with clients, executives, or the people who fund design, is the simple term "Research." That is to say, what is required is research, research and more research. More data and more research is never bad in my opinion. You simply can't have enough of it or enough time for time it. And by research, I mean across all facets. Design patterns, technology, feasibility, customers, market factors, trends, etc. The more I know, the more likely I am to make better design decisions in my experience. It simply cannot be silo'd to favor one aspect of what goes into a product.

It's quite clear to me that research is needed no matter how a single designer or a team approach the actual design process. When quality research is present, the final quality of the work is significantly increased than when it's not.

Given that baseline, I'm even willing to concede to let a single person or a collaborative team take a "user centered" design approach from that sort of in-depth, qualitative research vantage point, where they weigh their design decisions to favor users for whatever reason. I say this, because in my experience, once you have to weigh technology considerations and business decisions that come from concrete research and data, it's nearly impossible to favor any of them (user, technology or business) without driving yourself mad in the process. To that degree, Research is ultimate equalizer and the ultimate path to a solid foundation for any type of product design, and the very thing that often makes what comes out as a good product to being an extraordinary one.

I also believe the approach Jim is referring to often occurs from people, either as a team or on their own, who have a lot of prior experience in designing something. This experience acts as research, to the degree that their ultimate design process doesn't favor or look like "UCD". It's just works from a basis of solid, concrete knowledge about the thing they are designing.

-- Andrei Herasimchuk

Principal, Involution Studios
innovating the digital world

e. andrei at involutionstudios.com
c. +1 408 306 6422

*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 . discuss at ixda.org
Unsubscribe .... http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe
List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines
List Help http://www.ixda.org/help

Thanks Jeff for the humanist definition,

I think the humans (the cognitive limits and the motivation) AKA the "users" should be included in the discussion of the definition along with the medium (digital seems appropriate) and the process.

-- Oleh Kovalchuke
Interaction Design is the Design of Time - hey, another definition : ) http://www.tangospring.com/IxDtopicWhatIsInteractionDesign.htm

On Mon, 21 Jan 2008 09:58:26, Jeff Seager abrojos at hotmail.com wrote:

Here's a model definition that I love for its brevity and clarity, from the weblink Michele has just posted: "Human Factors is concerned with the application of what we know about people, their abilities, characteristics, and limitations to the design of equipment they use, environments in which they function, and jobs they perform." There are other reasonable definitions of the same term that aren't as satisfying to me. One thing I really like about this one is the simple language. Another is "the application of what we know ..." because what we know will change with time [trim]

Update:

Anyone who volunteered already has been sent a Welcome email to a Basecamp project I set up for this "Design Definitions" project.

We'll post something to the list for feedback as soon as we can. In the meantime, feel free to keep making yourselves crazy. ; )

-r-

On Jan 21, 2008, at 1:12 PM, Robert Hoekman, Jr. wrote:

The definition of UCD should include discussion of how it's practiced.

Ok, then just amend "practiced at the whim of the practioner."

Oh, by the way, add that also for interaction design, information architecture, visual design, and every other UX sub-discipline.

Jared

On Jan 21, 2008, at 1:12 PM, Robert Hoekman, Jr. wrote:

The definition of UCD should include discussion of how it's practiced. Same for ACD, and so on.

Robert,

I think you're grand and really smart. I love your work.

But I think you gotta quit with the Activity-Centered-Design-Is- Better-Than-User-Centered-Design stuff. It's just not going anywhere, man.

First, as you've discovered, there is no standard definition of User Centered Design. This is because the term doesn't stand alone.

It's a relative term, originally coined to deal with people who designed things without ever considering users, their activities, or their needs. In those days, (and I was there when it was coined,) common practice was to create products with features, functionality, and interaction models that satisfied business goals without any attention to who used it, why they used it, or how they used it.

So, by starting to talk about a user-centric process, people could communicate with the then designer-cum-programmer who was all about shipping code without actually thinking about use. And it basically worked.

I've heard/read you go on and on about activity-centered design. (To be fair, I've been known to go on and on about things. In fact, I've been thinking about joining a support group about going on and on. It's called On And On Anon. : ))

To restate what I've heard from you when you start talking about activity-centric process, you say that the differences between users don't matter as long as you focus on the activity. That if you focus on activity, you cover the needs and create great designs without all the heavy lifting involved in studying differences in users.

I think for some applications, that is correct. One I've heard you talk about is photographic sharing sites, like a Flickr.com or Photobucket.com. If you focus on the activities, such as uploading, designating "friends" to share with, printing, and manipulating photos (red-eye removal, cropping, rotation, color adjustment), it doesn't matter what the differences are. After all, uploading is uploading and printing is printing, no matter how smart, tall, or redheaded the user is.

To some extent, I think you're correct about this.

However, not all apps are the same. Imagine the same application, but not used by the general public, but instead professional photographers. Imagine the business, because they are a niche market, trying to go for as many specialties as possible: wedding photographers, industrial photographers, mall photo studio chains, and private photo studios that do yearbook pictures.

Now the functionality and interface needs to change, not just because the business needs are different for each one, but because of the nature of the work. For example, where the person doing the uploading may be the photographer themselves in the wedding photographer instance, with the private studio it likely to be an assistant who has little photographic expertise (such as a part-time college student). Providing sophisticated image manipulation functionality for the former audience may be dangerous to the end product if provided the same way to the latter audience. Here, audience differences do matter and designing for them requires attention.

Instead of constantly harking in a mine-is-better-than-yours format, why don't you start helping us understand how, as designers walking into a new project, we can begin to determine if we can get away with only applying budget and resources to activities, or if we're in one of these situations where we need to really think about the subtleties in user differences.

(And don't cop out with a "you never need to think about user differences" answer, because you & I both know that isn't true. Never is never the right word. : ))

Hugs & kisses,

Jared

Jared M. Spool
User Interface Engineering
510 Turnpike St., Suite 102, North Andover, MA 01845 e: jspool at uie.com p: +1 978 327 5561
http://uie.com Blog: http://uie.com/brainsparks

On Jan 21, 2008 7:28 PM, Gretchen Anderson gretchen at lunar.com wrote: Out of curiosity (I'm very confused by this thread) is the issue with "user-centered" design the fear that it's somehow ignoring biz & tech?

No, the issue is that a bunch of really opinionated people can't seem to read and digest things that have been long established. Just my two cents :-)

I am very confused by the thread as well. But, I can grasp what UCD is without any problem whatsoever. Wa—HOO!

On Jan 21, 2008, at 11:27 PM, Jeff White wrote:

On Jan 21, 2008 7:28 PM, Gretchen Anderson gretchen at lunar.com wrote: Out of curiosity (I'm very confused by this thread) is the issue with "user-centered" design the fear that it's somehow ignoring biz & tech? No, the issue is that a bunch of really opinionated people can't seem to read and digest things that have been long established. Just my two cents :-)

No... Coming from one of those opinionated people, the question is simple: Is "User Centered Design" user centered or not?

If the answer is yes, the user is truly the center of all things when it comes to designing a product, then I posit that's a really incomplete, poor way of designing anything since having the center of the design process be on the user isn't always the right way to make a decision or approach a design problem, for a variety of practical reasons.

If the answer is no, user centered design isn't always focused on the user and the center of everything, then change change the damn label already.

I have no idea why that's controversial.

-- Andrei Herasimchuk

Principal, Involution Studios
innovating the digital world

e. andrei at involutionstudios.com
c. +1 408 306 6422

And fwiw... I keep hearing people say the answer is "no, " UCD is not really user-centered on everything. So in that regard, I can't for the life of me understand why it's mislabeled.

-- Andrei Herasimchuk

Principal, Involution Studios
innovating the digital world

e. andrei at involutionstudios.com
c. +1 408 306 6422

On Jan 22, 2008, at 2:27 AM, Jeff White wrote:

On Jan 21, 2008 7:28 PM, Gretchen Anderson gretchen at lunar.com wrote: Out of curiosity (I'm very confused by this thread) is the issue with "user-centered" design the fear that it's somehow ignoring biz & tech? No, the issue is that a bunch of really opinionated people can't seem to read and digest things that have been long established.

User-centered design is a 1980s concept that has long outlived its usefulness, except in the deepest, darkest corners of IT (where the COBOL still lives and breathes).

Here, in 2008, the only people who seem to want to talk about it are those people who've decided they want to take the same can of beans, replace the label, and then declare it to be somehow better. So far, they have yet to explain why the new label improves the old can.

Yet, we love them anyways.

Jared

Jared M. Spool
User Interface Engineering
510 Turnpike St., Suite 102, North Andover, MA 01845 e: jspool at uie.com p: +1 978 327 5561
http://uie.com Blog: http://uie.com/brainsparks

That's your question, Andrei. There have been a crazy amount of misconceptions about what UCD is not only in this thread, but in this organization since I've been one of the opinionated, most likely annoying, loud-mouthed participants. Sorry, everyone, BTW. :-)

Take the recent discussion about personas where people thought you could document your non-research based assumptions and call it a persona. It's not, plain and simple. It's something, it's a useful tool sometimes, but based on the long standing definition of a persona - it's not a persona. This seems incredibly simple to me, and its maddening to see all the discussion around stuff like this when there are definitions out there.

The goal of this little project is to define UCD among other things, to help make the IxDA a more reputable organization? Are we sure we're not just proving that we just don't understand something our peers in other areas of UX have known and been agreeing on for years and years? Will that help establish our credibility, or take away from it? There's been stuff out there for decades saying "this is what UCD is". Andrei, even if the syntax of the term is not to your liking - it's a term with meaning. People understand it - potential clients, executives, etc. That is a good thing!!

On Jan 22, 2008 3:15 AM, Andrei Herasimchuk
andrei at involutionstudios.com wrote:
On Jan 21, 2008, at 11:27 PM, Jeff White wrote: On Jan 21, 2008 7:28 PM, Gretchen Anderson gretchen at lunar.com wrote: Out of curiosity (I'm very confused by this thread) is the issue with "user-centered" design the fear that it's somehow ignoring biz & tech? No, the issue is that a bunch of really opinionated people can't seem to read and digest things that have been long established. Just my two cents :-) No... Coming from one of those opinionated people, the question is simple: Is "User Centered Design" user centered or not? [trim]

Jared, with all due respect, that's a gigantic exaggeration that simply is not true. Every organization i've ever worked for has used cutting edge technology, but they're still locking engineers away in a room and not involving users in design. There's still a lack of understanding across a big part of industry about what UCD is and why you should do it in the first place. That's why it's a useful term, for me at least. I'm making the assumption that means it's useful for others. Maybe that's a wrong assumption.

I don't care if user centered design isn't the exact right phrase/term. I just don't think it's worth the effort to put a different label on the same thing and reeducate people about it.

If I'm selling the benefits of UCD to an executive, and my teammate is selling the benefits of data driven design or user interface engineering or whatever - what message does that send to that executive? It's not a good one, whatever it is. UCD is found all over the place - websites, professional organizations, in job descriptions, on resumes, etc. This is such a victory for us, and for the poor people who use software and other products. Why we are endlessly bitching about semantics now is beyond my realm of comprehension.

Jeff

On Jan 22, 2008 7:11 AM, Jared M. Spool jspool at uie.com wrote: On Jan 22, 2008, at 2:27 AM, Jeff White wrote: On Jan 21, 2008 7:28 PM, Gretchen Anderson gretchen at lunar.com wrote: Out of curiosity (I'm very confused by this thread) is the issue with "user-centered" design the fear that it's somehow ignoring biz & tech? No, the issue is that a bunch of really opinionated people can't seem to read and digest things that have been long established. User-centered design is a 1980s concept that has long outlived its usefulness, except in the deepest, darkest corners of IT (where the COBOL still lives and [trim]

I think this is where there is a bit of a disconnect. Its one thing to proclaim and even act (design) as user centered. But if all your user information comes from insider speculation, then you have not moved very far forward. The key, IMO, is what Jeff mentions as "data driven'. I use the term UCD frequently to focus decision makers on the need for research.

Mark

On Tuesday, January 22, 2008, at 08:26AM, "Jeff White" jwhite31 at gmail.com wrote:

If I'm selling the benefits of UCD to an executive, and my teammate is selling the benefits of data driven design or user interface engineering or whatever - what message does that send to that executive? It's not a good one, whatever it is. UCD is found all over the place - websites, professional organizations, in job descriptions, on resumes, etc. This is such a victory for us, and for the poor people who use software and other products. Why we are endlessly bitching about semantics now is beyond my realm of comprehension.

Who is this definition really for? For us, the IxDA and related community? For management we want to sell UCD (or whatever we call it) to? Does management even care as long as their products are better, more profitable?

How precise does the definition need to be? Does it need to be perfect, or just good enough?

What's the point of the definition again? I kind of lost that somewhere along the line.

Cheers!

Todd Zaki Warfel
President, Design Researcher
Messagefirst | Designing Information. Beautifully. Contact Info
Voice: (215) 825-7423
Email: todd at messagefirst.com
AIM: twarfel at mac.com
Blog: http://toddwarfel.com
In theory, theory and practice are the same.
In practice, they are not.

I am not sure how many of you come from a language teaching background. But if there is an area where terms, sometimes several meaning the same thing, abound that is language teaching. I started off as behaviourist teacher, which could be called a learning perspective teacher, or a "listen and repeat" teacher. Every school will market their methodology as unique and name it as "Someone's Method" although they will basically use the same methodology with tweaks here and there.

From my experience as a teacher in a market such as the Latin-American (big,

big, big and profitable), it would be a bit of a waste of time trying to imprint a definition of the field and educate decision-makers about the specifics of language learning or a language teaching methodology and how and what makes it similar or different from this and that method. The definition is irrelevant.

Giving people a clear definition of what a language teaching method was wouldn't make any difference either. People are filling up schools because of a perceived need of learning English to get better jobs and make more money, ok some are doing it for the cultural and educational prospects and others are doing it for love (damn gringos stealing our women : ) ), but my point is that from a user perspective, the motivators are more important than the methods and definition of these methods, being that most are blind with (or focused towards) the prospect of the positive results, which are the motivators in first place.

If a school says that they do not teach a language but a "way of being" which includes language, culture and street smarts and another says that they "teach the language to work around your personality just like your native language" and both schools throw their marketing and pedagogical structure to make themselves known for these, that is what it is: marketing and definitely pedagogical innovation but which amount of students really understand this at first? After all, for them, it still is a language course whether it is being taught by Noam Chomsky or yours truly.

They will be checking if there is a DVD player in each room, a computer lab, a good library, extra-curricular language clubs, the teachers are all native speakers or lived abroad for a long time and other things that they perceive (mistakenly perhaps since very few do use the libraries and spend time in the computer labs and extra-curricular language clubs) as the facilitators of their expected outcome.

Talking about languages, I believe if we could split a bit of the time dedicated for finding a definition for UCD to analyse things such as linguistic accessibility and the impact on usability and thinking of ways of researching taxonomies for card sorting activities with users giving the terms to be sorted from the start that would be equally beneficial.

Cheers,

Luis

"I don't care if user centered design isn't the exact right phrase/term. I just don't think it's worth the effort to put a different label on the same thing and reeducate people about it."

The definition of UCD should include discussion of how it's practiced. Ok, then just amend "practiced at the whim of the practioner."

Ha! Very nice.

-r-

I think you're grand and really smart. I love your work.

Aw shux. ; )

But I think you gotta quit with the
Activity-Centered-Design-Is-Better-Than-User-Centered-Design stuff. It's just not going anywhere, man.

I haven't even approached that subject in this thread, so I'm not sure why you're chiming in here. We're talking only about definitions. I'm very much interested in reaching a definition to some of these key terms so that we can stop debating the definitions every week in thread after thread.

Of course, I am also interested in defining UCD so that I can more effectively make a case for ACD. The differences need to be clear so that the appropriate solution can be chosen.

However, not all apps are the same. Imagine the same application, but not used by the general public, but instead professional photographers.

Now the functionality and interface needs to change, not just because the business needs are different for each one, but because of the nature of the work.

Funny - I've designed apps for both situations, so this is a wonderful example.

The problem is in how you framed the question. You're looking at the different audiences, so you're seeing differences in audience type. I looked at the differences in the activities. I designed both to support different activities.

Instead of constantly harking in a mine-is-better-than-yours format, why don't you start helping us understand how, as designers walking into a new project, we can begin to determine if we can get away with only applying budget and resources to activities, or if we're in one of these situations where we need to really think about the subtleties in user differences.

I have written a 3-part article on this subject for Peachpit.com to attempt to explain more about the approach and how to use it. Pt01 is up http://www.peachpit.com/guides /content.aspx?g=webdesign &seqNum=352and the others are on their way.

This very short series isn't nearly as comprehensive as I'd like. It may turn into a book someday. Don't know yet. Don't know if I care enough about the whole subject yet to write the book.

With all this in mind, I still don't understand why you're calling me on this in this particular thread. I have yet to say anything about ACD being better than UCD. I've only said we should work to define both.

-r-

How can you even know if ACD is any different than UCD if you're saying UCD is not defined?

On Jan 22, 2008 11:52 AM, Robert Hoekman, Jr. robert at rhjr.net wrote:

Of course, I am also interested in defining UCD so that I can more effectively make a case for ACD. The differences need to be clear so that the appropriate solution can be chosen.

On Jan 22, 2008, at 11:52 AM, Robert Hoekman, Jr. wrote:

With all this in mind, I still don't understand why you're calling me on this in this particular thread.

Because I'm a mind reader. Why else would you need a definition of one, except to draw a box around it so you can say the other is different? : )

I have yet to say anything about ACD being better than UCD.

So, it's not?

I've only said we should work to define both.

Yah, so I've heard. And how's that working for you?

The problem with all these "definitions" is the old saying, "As soon as you draw a box around me, the first thing I want to do is step out of it."

If this list has proven anything, it's that we CAN'T define "information", "interaction", "design", "usability", "personas", "designers", "design process", "design thinking", "typography", "layout", or any other term.

Hell, we can't even define "definition."

Maybe we need Justice Potter Stewart to moderate this list?

Just sayin'

Jared

Jared M. Spool
User Interface Engineering
510 Turnpike St., Suite 102, North Andover, MA 01845 e: jspool at uie.com p: +1 978 327 5561
http://uie.com Blog: http://uie.com/brainsparks

On Jan 22, 2008, at 12:22 PM, Jared M. Spool wrote:

If this list has proven anything, it's that we CAN'T define "information", "interaction", "design", "usability", "personas", "designers", "design process", "design thinking", "typography", "layout", or any other term.

Somehow w/o a proper "certified" definition of personas, information architecture, interaction design, design thinking, design research, prototypes, and a few others, we've been able to successfully redesign software/applications/websites.

Let me know when you guys get this thing figured out. In the mean time, I'm off to finish some personas, dropping behavior notes on some patterns, and starting a new prototype this afternoon : ).

Cheers!

Todd Zaki Warfel
President, Design Researcher
Messagefirst | Designing Information. Beautifully. Contact Info
Voice: (215) 825-7423
Email: todd at messagefirst.com
AIM: twarfel at mac.com
Blog: http://toddwarfel.com
In theory, theory and practice are the same.
In practice, they are not.

Why else would you need a definition of one, except to draw a box around it so you can say the other is different?

These definitions are primarily so the people on this list can stop debating the definitions, at least for the sake of argument. I hope they catch on beyond this list, but mostly I'm just tired of the endless semantic debates. If we can point to something and say "that's a car", then we might be able to agree on what a car is, at least long enough for people to make points without having to debate the definition of "car".

I have yet to say anything about ACD being better than UCD. So, it's not?

I didn't say that. I said I don't understand why you brought this up on this thread, when I haven't touched the subject of better or worse.

I've only said we should work to define both.
Yah, so I've heard. And how's that working for you?

Don't know yet. Got the Basecamp project set up. We'll see where it goes.

If this list has proven anything, it's that we CAN'T define "information", "interaction", "design", "usability", "personas", "designers", "design process", "design thinking", "typography", "layout", or any other term. Hell, we can't even define "definition."

That may very well be the case, but I'm going to give it a shot anyway. It's entirely possible that you're far more wise than I, and this little group will never come up with a definition good enough to suit the IxDA Board and community, but I still say it's worth a shot. And if it ends up being a waste of time, well then I learn something.

-r-

"I hope they catch on
beyond this list"

They have caught on beyond this list.

On Jan 22, 2008, at 12:37 PM, Robert Hoekman, Jr. wrote:

If this list has proven anything, it's that we CAN'T define "information", "interaction", "design", "usability", "personas", "designers", "design process", "design thinking", "typography", "layout", or any other term. Hell, we can't even define "definition." That may very well be the case, but I'm going to give it a shot anyway. It's entirely possible that you're far more wise than I, and this little group will never come up with a definition good enough to suit the IxDA Board and community, but I still say it's worth [trim]

"Wise" isn't the right word.

"Pessimistic" could work.

"Down-right pissy" is probably best.

: )

Jared

"Wise" isn't the right word. "Pessimistic" could work. "Down-right pissy" is probably best.

I was being nice. ; )

-r-

Jeff White asked: " How can you even know if ACD is any different than UCD if you're saying UCD is not defined?"

Personally, Jeff, when I take a UCD approach, I completely ignore anything related to activity and focus exclusively on the state of the user's soul.

Otherwise I might accidentally be doing activity-centered design. My union card doesn't say I'm allowed to do ACD, only UCD.

Andrew Hinton
personal: inkblurt.com

Robert I would love to join the basecamp team.

Posted from the new ixda.org
http://www.ixda.org/discuss?post=24685

Robert I would love to join the basecamp team.

Actually, it looks like we're moving the project over to IxDA's Basecamp account, so David or Liz will need to add you.

-r-