There's so much irony and contradiction in this email that, well, I'll just address them below...
On Nov 24, 2009, at 9:25 AM, Alan Wexelblat wrote: > It's my opinion, as I said in the original message, that it's a story about > how UX fits into large corporate culture. And, yes, it's also the case that > Curtis doesn't understand how the external face of the company (the AA site) > is produced.[..] That's just it. Part of UX is about understanding the business. Why, why, why don't UX people get this? A great UX designer, and I use the term designer loosely, understands the importance that the business model has in the grand scheme of UX. If you don't get that, then you fail right out of the gate. This guy didn't get that. I think it's a shame that AA fired someone who cared so much about the customer experience on their site. However, that's where my sympathy stops. As an employee of the company and a designer, this guy needs to understand that there are things much bigger than his personal feelings and attitudes at stake here and should've considered the recoil of posting to a public forum from his company computer. Not too bright. > Redesigning a Web site is easy.[...] Screeeeeech (sound of brakes coming on). Clearly it's not. Your comment above even blatantly communicates that. Redesigning a website of a global business is not easy. There are a lot of factors that come into play: business goals, customer goals, legacy issues, technology platform, available resources, time, budget, impact of the change, etc. We're not talking about redesigning the website of a local bakery here, we're talking about redesigning the website of a global ebusiness. Downplaying that is dangerous to say the least. > Redesigning the user experience for a big complex company is hard, even > leaving aside the problems of AA's particular corporate culture. But it's an > important problem for UX professionals to understand. And part of that UX is the website. You're totally contradicting yourself here. > Or at least, some of us. If it's not important for you, and you already know > it all, great. Mazal tov. But please don't piss on others' conversations. Hey kettle, you're black. Cheers! Todd Zaki Warfel Principal Designer, Messagefirst Author of Prototyping: a practitioner's guide http://bit.ly/protobk ---------------------------------- Contact Info Voice: (215) 825-7423 Email: t...@zakiwarfel.com Blog: zakiwarfel.com Twitter: @zakiwarfel ---------------------------------- In theory, theory and practice are the same. In practice, they are not. ________________________________________________________________ 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
