"The thing that most amused me is that after he quotes me (out of context, and with no link to my original words), he then writes, "Enough of those pesky design stars with an overinflated belief in their own creative vision!"
Peter - when I read the article - and saw your quote - I was so flummoxed, that I was sure that he took you out of context or misquoted you. I have yet to meet, in 14 years doing this - a designer who is only concerned with making things pretty. Elegant, simple, clean, maybe - but every one, myself included, wants to be involved right up front, before business requirements, during competitive analysis. The boggest complain is that their involvement comes at the end, not at the beginning. On Sun, Apr 27, 2008 at 6:47 PM, Peter Merholz <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > > We explicit do NOT want someone from a design background. If Adaptive > Path has a gap, it's in our business background. We have plenty of > designers/creatives/practitioners who appreciate business. What we > don't have, and what we want, is the business person who appreciates > the impact that design can have on the world. We're looking to > diversify the minds that power the business -- why simply hire another > person who thinks like us? > > --peter The more I thought about this last night, the more I thought about AP's unique situation - filled with designers. Perhaps to move to the next level - what you decided you all needed was someone completely different. Someone that comes from a very different industry. And to Scott: " I just don't see the point in complaining about not being invited - invite yourself. If you start your own thing you can make yourself the person who does the inviting, instead of the other way around, and if a non-territorializied strategic landscape is what you desire, it will likely only come by your own hand." This is actually something we, as designers, can do to fix. Again, thinking last night about this subject more - and thinking about deliverables in a typical ucd process that involves business requirements, comp analysis, stakeholder interviews - isn't the onous on us as designers to learn business. Not just a primer in the lingo - but to sit down and take some courses. How can we gather business requirements, if we have no idea what/how/why a business exists within it's ecosystem? How can we do completive analysis (which is more than just looking at a competitor's website), if we haven't read Porter's "Competitive Advantage."? Most, if not all companies have a marketing department, but not a UX department. How can we effectively steer the debate/discussion away from demographic/psychographic research using things like Claritas and focus groups - if we haven't studied marketing to any great extent? I am not saying that we all need to get out there and get MBAs (it took me almost 4 years of night school to get mine - worth it - but I thought about quitting just about once a month) -- but we need to bust our butts to prove that we understand what the business folks are talking about - instead of complaining that we aren't at the table. If not - we surrender to the managers that think they can wrap a process and methodology and moniker around design - and think they can manage it with Design Thinking. As if that's possible. Design Thinking without designers is a boatload of HorsePucky (to quote Colonel Potter). "Where you innovate, how you innovate, and what you innovate are design problems" --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Will Evans | User Experience Architect tel +1.617.281.1281 | [EMAIL PROTECTED] --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ________________________________________________________________ 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
