Wow, thank you everyone for the great input. Stoked to see that some people have had a chance to actually do this.
>From what I have read so far I can summarize the following; - Is a valuable option to have in the toolkit, as a supplemental activity to observation and as a way to mix it up. - Works well when its possible (ie you are working internal to the company vs. as a consultant) - Not practical for all Design work or specific jobs, (911 dispatch is out) - Doing the training (or portion thereof) required for the job/tool/app is a good way to accelerate this, especially for highly skilled domains. (Genetics) - If you can't actually do the job you can play with the tools (or instruments) -Length and intensity of stint will influence your perspective, but you will almost always be stuck with the perspective of a newbie and thus be obliged to validate your findings with the old hands. -There is still not a generally recognized name for this approach, but I do like"Walk in Their Shoes" and "Contextual Participation" (clear to UX folks if no-one else) . -Hard to collect data while doing (does it makes sense to do this? Is there value in channelling your experience directly into design?[with justifications] or should it be mediated by data first?) HOW DOES EXPERIENCE DOING THE JOB AFFECT DESIGN/PROCESS? Being somewhat research oriented and seeing all the discussion on the academic thread I'd be curious to see the outcome of a design pseudo-experiment. (Ahem, calling Design Profs) Basically, have a 2-4 design teams go head to head on a specific design brief. 2 teams perform observation only vs. 2 teams that have a mix of training/doing with some team members observing. Obviously there are too many variables to eliminate here, but I am curious to see how doing the job "might" affect the design outcome. Will the designers who did the job have more empathy and understanding? Will it reflect in the design? Will performing the job influence acceptance of subsequent design by the users? Cheers, Julian ________________________________________________________________ Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ....... disc...@ixda.org Unsubscribe ................ http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines ............ http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .................. http://www.ixda.org/help
