Dave-- I think it's great that you're asking this question.
A lot depends on where you work. Especially in small entrepreneurial teams or in larger organizations that are new to interaction design, it's rare for group design work to occur since there's only one designer. As my team's only IxD -- probably the only IxD in all of Boston's hospitals, unfortunately -- I typically do my design work independently with frequent group review. I will occasionally organize group sessions so that developers and managers can exchange idea. Sometimes I head to the whiteboard with a developer to hash out the details of a complex UI component. Do those count? It may be worth some formal ethnographic research about how IxDs practice in the field. -Jon On Tue, Nov 17, 2009 at 7:01 AM, Dave Malouf <dave....@gmail.com> wrote: > I know that everything we do is collaborative in that we have to work with > biz & tech and often other roles of design like visual, copy, research, > etc. > > But my question is how often do you find yourself collaborating on group > work in your specific role as an IxD or UX designers? > > I ask this question b/c when I look back on my work career there were very > few moments when I did work in a group. I did have reviews with others and > even worked on the same project at points, but barely ever did group work. > > So my question really is, is the focus in design education on group work > (from what I can see from all the students saying they only have group > projects) map against the real world practice that these students are going > to be lumped into when they graduate? > > I think I have this aching feeling that b/c of educations shortened > "product > lifecycles" (10 wk quarters and 15 wk semesters) that we do group projects > to get "big results" out of students. > > Further, I wonder if we map IxD education too much against say industrial > design education methods, instead of either coming up with our own or > looking towards a more appropriate model. Does graphic design edu have as > much group work? hmm? i think I'll go and find out. > > BTW, the last 2 group project classes I did with my students had the > annoying problem of finding just the right group size for the needs of the > project. Invariably 2 problems arose for the groups: > 1) bottlenecks b/c of tools > 2) students being left w/o enough work to show their participation level > was > equal to the rest of the team > > I'd be interested in others thoughts regarding this. > > - dave > > -- > Dave Malouf > http://davemalouf.com/ > http://twitter.com/daveixd > http://scad.edu/industrialdesign > http://ixda.org/ > ________________________________________________________________ > 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 > ________________________________________________________________ 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
