experience matters

“The lists are constantly filled with requests for ‘best practices’ around the simplest of interface issues (e.g., “Should I put my text above or to the left of a form field?”), seemingly endless debates on ‘what is IA?’ and, most recently, an impressively daft call—based solely on anecdotal evidence—for IAs to pursue accreditation.”

Yes! Let’s cut ourselves off from everyone else, making it harder to understand us and the goals we pursue.

It is, as your coworker said, enough to make me want to tear out my eyeballs.

In my head, after reading this post, the crowd went wild and started chunking roses at you.

Across blogging communities, it’s a fine line between collaborative and inspirational conversation and a stagnating echo-chamber.

A marketer friend of mine recently said to me:

“Since subscribing to blogs and following ‘likeminded’ Twitters, my job satisfaction has down because I can’t reconcile all these voices say I should be doing with what my customers want and need me to be doing.”

Thanks for the post, Gabby.

Amen.

“The lists are constantly filled with requests for ‘best practices’…”

While there are certainly some standards that most IA/UX folks adhere to, what we do tends to be so individualized–based on the USERS that we are designing for–that best practices become moot.

How can someone suggest a “best practice” without a fairly detailed understanding of the end user? A “best practice” on my project may contradict what the users expect and need on yours.

In the end, it’s not about pleasing your colleagues. All that really matters is whether the users whom you designed the experience for find it useful and valuable.

[...] Gabby Hon’s CM blog post “Less Talking, More Doing“, I went to IxDA to look at the conversation threads to see if they are as messy as [...]

So, you’re suggesting we unsubscribe to all the mailing lists, but remain subscribed to this blog? How are the two not the same evil by your argument, aside from the fact that this blog is a uni-directional soapbox and a mailing list is a give-and-take exchange of ideas…?

If you work alone and need a mentor, visit the sites for AIFIA…

Actually, it’s been the IA Institute (http://iainstitute.org) for a while now.

I think the lists serve an important function as the public square of these communities. They’re mostly open, they’re lightly moderated, and you’re free to ask dumb questions (as I have many times) and have debates.

That said, I get frustrated with the discussions about accreditation and definitions in the same way you do. But the people that talk about these issues aren’t trolling (usually); they have a legitimate concern about the subject and the profession. It might be flogging a long-dead horse to me (and probably to you) but it’s a new and vital subject to them.

IAs aren’t born knowing that accreditation is pointless and the we collectively decided to stop “defining the damn thing” three years. So they ask–and that’s the way it goes in a public forum.

Instead of retreating from these forums, maybe the solution is to be more active and participate in the ways you think are valuable. What’s that saying–”be the change you want to see in the world”? I think that’s as applicable to discussion lists as anywhere else. (And I say this as an active lurker on both the IAI and IxDA lists.)

Hey Cam

I’d argue that having similar discussions with the same people is a lot cutting yourself off, anyways. I too worry that a lot of IA discussions can become insular and limited in their scope and recently, I’ve discussions with business analysts, account planners, designers (of all ilks) and researchers more fruitful. In my case, “unsubscribing” became an issue of giving up something to get something else ….

And Cynthia – what about comments? ;=)

Dave

[...] Less Talking, More Doing at Experience Matters SHARETHIS.addEntry({ title: “Getting lost in semantics: what do we do?”, url: “http://www.everydayux.com/2008/02/13/getting-lost-in-semantics-what-do-we-do/” }); [...]

Hmm. This is how land-grabbers and peddlers of books, seminars, papers, etc., operate. It’s their “business model” if you will: constant meme generation, chatter and self-promo. So yes, ignoring them is the only cure.

I would add one more frustration to this.. discussions around that apple does not follow THE process.. I nearly feel I should have written this post… I am not unsubscribing in the ‘hope’ … but whole heartedly agree with your view.

I also find that these discussions isolate the thought process to just one way of thinking (ironically) which is internal to the community, while outside world is what we need to connect most with..

- AJ

Hi everyone — just wanted to check in. I’m home sick these past few days but wanted to say thanks for responding to the post.

Cam Beck: Not cut off from *everyone*, mind you–the less time we spend chattering amongst ourselves (and necessarily running in circles, chasing our tails) the more time we can spend talking to customers–those people for whom we’re problem solving.

What we do is more art than science–if we concentrate too much on finding the ‘right’ answer amongst ourselves to the detriment of talking to and listening to customers, we fail them.

Excellent post, Gabby.

When designers become laser focused on finding the silver bullet for something like text field design they miss the opportunity to discover new creative, perhaps better, solutions.

As you state above, “doing” is a good way to get to a solution. Also “doing + testing”, especially for interactive elements like forms, is great. And, similar to your proposal to “stop worrying what Joe IA is doing” we shouldn’t think that formalized usability tests are the only way. Try guerilla testing. There are people sitting right next to us that provide perfectly good test cases for our designs.

Thanks for the spark!
Lindsay

[...] Interaction Design Community Considered Harmful Ah! A new kind of fatigue emerges: professional community fatigue. Interesting and slightly controversial perspective here: stop participating in your professional groups and go do some work. Tags: none « ChittahChattah Quickies Simulacrap » EMail This Post var blogTool = “WordPress”; var blogURL = “http://www.portigal.com/wp”; var blogTitle = “All This ChittahChattah”; var postURL = “http://www.portigal.com/blog/chittahchattah-quickies-197/”; var postTitle = “ChittahChattah Quickies”; var commentAuthorFieldName = “author”; var commentAuthorLoggedIn = false; var commentFormID = “commentform”; var commentTextFieldName = “comment”; var commentButtonName = “submit”; No Comments so far Leave a comment RSS feed for comments on this post. TrackBack URI Leave a comment Line and paragraph breaks automatic, e-mail address never displayed, HTML allowed: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <code> <em> <i> <strike> <strong> [...]

Righteous and right on. Great post, Gabby.