On Feb 10, 2008, at 5:44 AM, Marc Rettig wrote: > THE MISSING TOPIC > It's this: we are a community supposedly driven by understanding of > the > people who are affected by our work (that's PC for "our users"), but > we > aren't talking about them very much. Now, this isn't some kind of > attempt to > induce guilt. This isn't a shame email. I just want to point it out > as a > characteristic of our community, and suggest something that might > enrich > some of these hundreds of thousands of conversations. > > We're geeks/craftspeople (Hi Alan). We might be more sociable and > stylish > than the geeks in the movies, but when we get together we talk shop: > methods, gear, office stories. Both fun and useful. Good for us. >
As the architect of the conference program, let me explain why I de- emphasized users (read: design research and usability testing and generative exercises). I did so simply because for this first conference I wanted to put the emphasis on us and on our unique niche. There are other conferences for those other topics. I wanted to focus specifically on the period between the end of research but before any testing. Which is why there was your workshop and Susan Wyche's talk as starting points, then sessions on prototyping and development as enders, plus everything else in between. This was the sweet spot where we as a group are underserved and where IxDA can be the biggest help. Does that mean we ignored users? I don't think so. Carl DiSalvo's talk was all about community empowerment. Gabe White's was on the effect our work has on users. Doug Bolin's about making help more effective for users. Could we have done more to focus on users and figure out ways to involve them in our work? Sure, and I hope people will submit talks next year that do just that. Dan ________________________________________________________________ *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
