A More Mauvy Shade of Pinky Russet

During the closing plenary of the IA Summit on Sunday, Jesse James Garrett said that “Information Architecture is not a profession … and neither is Interaction Design … we have and always will be User Experience Designers”. I’m paraphrasing a little from memory (the podcast isn’t out yet) – but the gist is there.

I’m a big believer in this viewpoint (and I chaired the IA Summit last year!). I believe that both IA and IxDA are disciplines or “fields” – but are inseperable enough that the “job” is User Experience Designer. This puts the emphasis on the end product rather than the tools we use to achieve it.

So … to see if I can start some kind of grass roots movement i’ve set up itsjustux.org – go there and sign the petition to show you believe too!

Just a quick update (for both of my readers – lol). I’m getting ready for my trip to the IA Summit in Memphis. I leave on Tuesday and I still have to polish the two posters i’m taking, The Foci of User Experience and the Context of User Experience. I’m hoping to get some great discussion and feedback on them – so if you’re going to the summit, stop by the reception on Friday night and i’ll see you there!

Someone at work sent me this Republican Reboot article, which crystalized the thing thats been bothering me about politics in general (in the UK and USA) for so long.  Namely, the “top down” nature of political parties.  Its probably naive of me, but i’ve always thought that political parties should be representations of the ‘will of the people’ (thats why they’re called ‘representatives’ in congress right?). Should parties really rebrand themselves – looking to attract new voters to their beliefs, or should they really be realigning themselves to the popular will of the people? This is what excited me about Obama’s campaign (and his win) – its the most ‘will of the people’ effort i’ve seen in politics for years.

Hey Lotus Notes designers! IA 101 – don’t put a menu choice I use all the time (Open Calendar For…) next to one that I never use (Import Holidays…) that takes 30 seconds to perform with no way to abort! Bad design.

There was another round of the “Defining the Damn Thing” (DTDT) discussion on the Information Architecture Institute list recently that started me thinking about the focus of different UX disciplines and the value that IA, specifically, brings to the table.  So heres a quick diagram to illustrate what I think might be the key focus of IA, connectedness. 

Remember folks, this is not about defining a role, or job description, its just an attempt to examine what we do when designing a user experience, and yes, I know the word “foci” is a little awkward!

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