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

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.

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

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

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.)