On Jun 1, 2009, at 7:25 PM, dave malouf wrote:
1) 80% of what UX practitioners do has been done within some context
of ID for few decades longer.
I'm going to take exception to this. I think Dave is using his rose
colored glasses filter here. 8^)
Or at least the lack of context is missing. That context is: what kind
of products are you designing?
If we are talking about software related products (web apps, RIAs,
desktop clients, even heavy interactive, Ajax type web sites) where
the screen display is a large part of the work involved, I'd have to
say neither ID nor GD has the general advantage here. Both are fairly
relevant in the design thinking that helps one get into designing
those kinds of products effectively.
The reason I think is this: With software, there's a heavy dose of GD
fundamentals that can get someone very far into the product before the
wall of interaction is hit simply because the very nature of software
is that its rendered on a screen display of some kind. The thing is
that interaction for software is an order of magnitude "less" (for
lack of a good term right now) or at least "contained" than what one
does when building physical products, digital components or not. So I
tend to find ID types generally do adequate when presented with
software design problems, but lacking core GD fundamentals like grid
and composition general relegates their work to be average overall.
The reverse becomes true of GD types. The display is gorgeous, but the
lack of effective interaction design brings the whole thing down to
the average level.
There are obviously exceptions to all of this.
Will this change as software becomes even more dynamic and advanced,
like with the blocks examples of mini-computers talking to each other
as shown at TED? Sure. How far is that out? Anyone's guess at this
stage. But at this point in time, I don't take the position that ID is
a better training ground for software related products. I feel it's
incredibly valuable, but you're going to be better suited by picking
major courses in either ID or GD as a primary focus, then
supplementing those course with at least the fundamentals of the
other, if not full on deep course work across the board if you want to
design software related products.
2) Its relationship to ergo/HF practice is very well established
This is certainly true.
3) the great programs out there get context of use, and
practice/teach some form of design research (i.e. anthro design).
This is wash in my opinion. So do great GD programs. In fact, GD is
all about communication and context, which for software related
products translates fairly well
Now, having said all of that, if you are trying to design a product
like Photoshop, I'm not sure which kind of person I'd prefer to have
to design that if building a team at this point in time. I would
expect ID trained designers would fair better with some of the core
fundamentals of it since Photoshop is really *all* interaction and
very little visual, but that has not been my experience. I've found
very people who truly understand what it means to design traditional
tool based software anymore, for whatever reason.
--
Andrei Herasimchuk
Chief Design Officer, Involution Studios
innovating the digital world
e. and...@involutionstudios.com
c. +1 408 306 6422
________________________________________________________________
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
