SIGIA-L Mail Archives: SIGIA-L: Re:
SIGIA-L: Re:
From: Richard W Williams (richard.w.williams_at_bms.com)
Date: Tue Jun 13 2000 - 15:37:44 EDT
George, All:
In my experience, certification for almost all but a few narrowly defined
fields
of interest is mostly a matter of licensed bureaucracy that fuels someone's
economy. It rarely certifies competence (e.g., teacher certification,
drivers'
licenses, gun registrations, curriculum vitae, corporate titles with
associated
position descriptions, and so on). IA is just too diverse - not to mention
ill-defined - even to consider the issue of certification. I also think that
certification is usually discussed in the context of small-scale skills or
tasks -
easily quantified with clearly meaningful metrics. ... so what makes a good
architectural design, after all? The technology changes monthly - never mind
the
tastes by which resulting architectures be judged.
Good luck to any who tackle this one ... I'll watch with popcorn for now ...
rick
George Olsen wrote:
> >Louis Rosenfeld wrote:
> >
> >Does anyone
> >have strong opinions either way about the value of IA certification?
> My
> >concern is that even if there was value in certification (and I'm not
> sure
> >there is), the field is simply not mature enough to build a standard
> >syllabus around, and that few would care to put in the effort to obtain
> >certification when demand for IAs is so great (and not likely to
diminish,
> >at least not in our lifetimes).
>
> I think certification is a really bad idea for the reasons you mentioned.
> But more importantly, IA involves a creative dimension that's hard to
> quantify. Graphic design groups (such as AIGA and the Graphic Arts Guild)
> have been debating the issue for at least a decade and so far rejected
> certification for this reason.
>
> In the graphic design field, certifications really only have been applied
> to the "wrist skills" of the field (i.e. can you color correct an image
> proper in Photoshop, can you layout something in Quark) and not the "brain
> skills." Interestingly, this also seems to be true in other fields. It's
> well known that the best programmers are literally 10 times more
productive
> than the worse, but these aren't the sort of skills you see on
certification
> tests.
>
> Which is the problem with all certifications -- the only thing they assure
> is a minimum standard of competency, they don't assure high quality.
> Especially if it's just a written test. The only way to really do a
meaningful
> certification would be to have someone work through a simulated project
> -- similiar to my sailing certifications, where you need to put the boat
> through required maneuvers -- but that's probably too costly for the
> people doing the certification.
>
> However, Lou hit the problem on the head -- unlike sailing, where there's
> well-established "right" and "wrong" way to do things, IA is still *far*
> too young for us to know that. And there's always going to be a
qualitative
> factor, since design inevitably involves optimizing trade-offs.
>
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