curious to hear what others thought about this, but certainly a controversial topic (as indicated by the number and kinds of questions raised). my biggest concern, as an interaction designer at a major global e-biz firm is twofold: the cultural/organizational conditions conducive to XIA approaches and the role of design in what seemed to be a code-driven process. what happens to the "gestalt" of the user experience, as one person asked, when there is such accelerated development and chunking of pieces of that experience (for the sake of efficiency, etc.)? rather utopian vision espoused...any other real-world questions/concerns from others?
Posted by uday.gajendar at February 28, 2004 07:25 PMI agreed with the points Chris Chandler raised about XIA during 5 Minute Madness (although I thought he was overly harsh in his delivery, but that's Chris for you):
- The customer is not the user
- The code as the spec is not an adequate representation of the system
- IAs aren’t/don’t want to be interface developers (some of us were to start with and stopped for good reasons).
- IAs certainly don’t want the added responsibility of being project manager, on top of everything else!
I was also concerned about:
- the lack of discussion on where/how visual design fits into this process
- the affect of refactoring on scope and deadlines
It sounded as though the most valuable part of XIA was the pair-IA'ing, but here at SBI.Razorfish we tend to collaborate like that even though it isn't a formal part of the process.
Posted by: Nancy Broden at March 2, 2004 08:35 PM
Thanks Nancy and Uday for commenting on this presentation. As I said during the 5-minute madness, there is a clear challenge to the position and responsibilities of an "IA" in many of the Agile Methodologies out there.
The previous posts have raised the most salient issues, but there is a difference between an "Extreme IA" Methodology, and an "Extreme Web Development" Methodology, which was not delimited in either the student project, or in Don's presentation.
I also want to say that I spoke with Professor Turnbull before the 5-Minutes to give him advance warning I was going to be calling him out, and why. I was going for funny, but sometimes that slips over into harsh... sorry Don! I think what you're doing is new and critically important work, I just think there are some important things that would have to be addressed before I would ever sign up to be an XIA the way you've defined it.
For another view of the issues and confusions, check out this conversation between Kent Beck and Alan Cooper from a while back:
http://www.fawcette.com/interviews/beck_cooper/
I get the feeling reading this that there are several places where the two are just not speaking the same language at all.
-cc
Posted by: Chris Chandler at March 2, 2004 10:19 PM