Comments on: U.X.

By: Richard

Richard — Fri, 03 Apr 2009 01:10:48 +0000

Who said the only thing UX Designers do is Strategy? UX Designers do UX Design and I think its a mistake to say that people can’t start out with that intent, hence why Kent State is broadening their focus into UX: http://iakm.kent.edu/programs/user-experience-design/

By: David Fiorito

David Fiorito — Thu, 02 Apr 2009 14:39:23 +0000

That may be possible but it creates a UX dilettante rather than an expert. It would be like a tech lead that didn’t cut his or her teeth on some hard coding, or back end support. Would you want a recent college grad to be building UX strategy?

Actually this reminds me of the old “webmasters” from the early 1990s.

By: Richard

Richard — Thu, 02 Apr 2009 01:02:05 +0000

I think people can start in UX if we teach them correctly (Jared just wrote a great post about this on the IxDA/IAI lists). To start in UX someone has to *do* each of the core disciplines (IA, IxDA, ID, Usability, Content, Business Strategy) for a while – 6-9 months each maybe in a rotational fashion.

By: David Fiorito

David Fiorito — Wed, 01 Apr 2009 19:46:50 +0000

I think end-to-end user experience designers are people that have enough years of experience to be able to see things from end-to-end. I see IA, IxD, and ID as paths that can lead to becoming a UX Designer but I can’t see anyone starting their careers in that role. We still need IAs, IxDs, and IDs to do their part in the end-to-end design process AND we need people focused on UX design and strategy to shape the forest, not plant the trees.

By: Richard

Richard — Fri, 27 Mar 2009 19:59:11 +0000

I don’t think they’re different professions because that implies you can often do one without the other and in my experience that is *very* rarely the case. I do think they’re different foci, or fields, or disciplines, or whatever but opportunities to exclusively do one are VERY limited.

So you end up with a whole bunch of people who do “UX Design” – some of them calling themselves IAs, some of them calling themselves IxDAs, some calling themselves whatever.

But in actuality, probably the biggest benefit of being a “UX Designer” is that the focus is on the end experience, not on the IA/IxDA/whatever part of it. Users and Business folks don’t give a fetid dingo’s left kidney about the IA or IxDA. They care about the User Experience.

By: David Fiorito

David Fiorito — Fri, 27 Mar 2009 19:39:08 +0000

I am still on the fence on this. I agree that UX is the big tent but, to me, IA and IxD are substantially different professions. IA is focused on structure and wayfinding – connection to use your terminology. IxD is focused on operation and well, interaction. Though these two things are so closely related that they often blend, I do not see them as being identical. They each have a sufficiently different focus. I hope hearing the full presentation sheds more light on this issue. As of now it doesn’t sound so great to me.