I hope I am not skewing or shifting the point of this argument. But I think the question I am hearing Robert ask is. "who does the designer work for?" Is it the user, or is it the business in general. And I think the answer depends upon the business culture you are working on, and to some extent whether you are an innie or an outie.
In my particular environment... it is left up to design to maintain the user perspective. There are plenty of others here worrying about shareholders, advertisers, revenue partners and search engines. Personally, I like to wear the use advocacy hat when I am in the meetings discussing the design problem or the solutions, but I have the ability to get out my shareholder hat or my revenue hat when I need to balance that perspective. That you will influence or persuade in your design efforts is a given. But what tact and what position will you operate from greatly determines your success in this role, and the success of the product. Mark On Mon, Jul 7, 2008 at 1:19 PM, Robert Hoekman Jr <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Some responses to all your responses so far. > > 1. I've read both of Cialdini's books, as well as Submit Now (Chak). > 2. I fully believe Marketing and IxD should work together, and that you > can't produce a great "experience" without this cooperation. > 3. I realize persuasion is inherent to design. > 4. As an IxD, I obsess over persuasiveness, and I strive to make my clients > obsess over it as well. > > That said, I've noticed, in a 3rd-person sort of way, that I often imply a > split between an application and the surrounding content. As in, there are > application elements, and then there are the things that go on on "the > marketing pages". I don't know when or why I started doing this, and I'm not > sure I even believe there's a real difference—it's just something I've > noticed myself saying to others. Ultimately, I design both "sides", so the > split is unimportant at best, but having caught myself saying this, I wanted > to explore it. > > So how have I been defining "marketing pages"? In an app with a structure > like Basecamp or Blinksale, let's say, the marketing pages are the homepage, > About Us, Learn More, testimonials, registration — things that exist purely > to encourage unregistered users to convert and to support conversion tasks. > Obviously, not every app has marketing pages, but you get the idea. > > Yes, I design these things, and I'm confident in my ability to do it well, > so why am I asking if I think persuasive elements should be left to > Marketing? Well, because it seems like — and maybe I'm just dead wrong — > that marketers would/should know more about persuasion than IxDs. I mean, > their whole careers are about persuading people to do things they may or may > not realize they want to do, right? So it seems like they would need to be > masterful persuaders to succeed. > > Granted, most of the marketers I've seen couldn't market their way out of a > cardboard box. But they should know a lot about persuasion, no? > > -r- ________________________________________________________________ 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
