SIGIA-L Mail Archives: Re: SIGIA-L: Dressing up in Lab Coats
Re: SIGIA-L: Dressing up in Lab Coats
From: Andrew Hinton (ahinton_at_symetri.com)
Date: Sun Feb 17 2002 - 17:18:02 EST
When I Lou's comment below, I thought "doesn't everybody already know this?"
It keeps amazing me that at *least* this is not agreed upon.
IA is about creating a context within which usability can even be
approached. Interaction design happens inside the confines of what IA
discovers and recommends.
(And before the flamethrowers get lit, let me say that ideally, everybody on
a project team is involved in the IA stuff...I'm speaking here of the
"activity" of IA, not the individual per se.)
Of course research is necessary, but each time you do it you learn more of
what you can begin to assume, and you can then focus on the deeper, weirder
stuff that you hadn't noticed before. Plus, it's not like we're dealing with
universal Newtonian laws here (which are a bit of a tidy fiction, but that's
another topic). We're dealing with unique situations, unique communities and
hegemonies for each "user group" we design for.
One thing that does complicate the role that Lou delineates below is that so
many of us have to *do* a lot of interaction design and usability stuff
because we're the only ones in our teams aware of how, or the only ones
willing or wanting to do it.
::lou_at_louisrosenfeld.com::wrote on 2/17/02 8:37 AM:
> Findability is very different than usability. Designing for findability
> also places information architecture more within the realm of creating
> rather than testing and evaluating. (So we need to work *with* usability
> engineers and others with good testing methods, instead of trying to *be*
> them.) And it also sets IA apart from interaction design, another field we
> allow ourselves to be too often confused with.
>
--
:: s y m e t r i ::
. andrew hinton . information architecture, bureau director
. w|336.819.6914 m|336.253.5399 . ahinton_at_symetri.com
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