"An unequivocal '1 million %' (to quote my American Idol Buddy Randy Jackson) YES!", Dave's answer to Andrei's question regarding aesthetic skills.
I have been following this post and many others like it, as I'm sure other newbies are, to see what's the best preparation to enter this field, especially if they are not coming from an art or graphic design background. Since reading these posts, graphic design fundamentals have opened my eyes. So, I do believe that those fundamentals are very helpful to know when a page is unbalanced or over crowded, etc. But how deep does the aesthetic abilities have to run? Please forgive me if this throws another layer of annoying discussion regarding definitions, but here is one from Webster's dictionary. Aesthetics: http://www.m-w.com/dictionary/aesthetic My point is that graphics/web/visual designers do more than just have a knack for knowing when something looks pleasing. For example, there are many people who have, never drawn, coded a web site, etc. that can naturally tell what's beautiful and what is not. So to make the question more direct, do IxD's need to know how to manipulate graphics, create from scratch or make touch-ups? Do they need to know how to use photoshop, illustrator, and other graphic design tools at a proficient or expert level? Do they even have to know how to implement CSS? I could be wrong, but I think this is where people are wondering if most "interaction" designers creates the form & layout, but then hand that over to "interface" designers to make the lines curve, swirl, add color schemes, blink, slide, etc, using some the nifty tools just mentioned above. Dave, I think you are absolutely right here: "an interface designer IS an interaction designer, but not all interaction designers are interface designers and not all designers are interaction designers." But where is the line drawn when one person is not both? And knowing how companies try so hard to get more & more out of less & less people, how realistic is it to be an IxD, but not a UID, especially when IxD/IA/usability in general has to be sold to companies as useful? ~ Lukeisha . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Posted from the new ixda.org http://www.ixda.org/discuss?post=25077 ________________________________________________________________ *Come to IxDA Interaction08 | Savannah* February 8-10, 2008 in Savannah, GA, USA Register today: http://interaction08.ixda.org/ ________________________________________________________________ Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ....... [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe ................ http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines ............ http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .................. http://www.ixda.org/help
