, from oldest to newest:
First, let no one say I'm not fond of gurus (exhibit A) so I laughed along with the rest of you at Charles' article.
But I feel there's a bit of hypocrisy here: this is the same Charles who recently wrote:
"Only properly educated individuals who hold either undergraduate or graduate degrees in human factors engineering or ergonomics can provide reliable professional usability engineering services."*
Grrr... oh how it grates. On the one hand "gurus aren't worth the money" on the other hand "you must be an initiate into the high priesthood of human factors if you're really going to talk about usability, etc."
Yup, I hear ya Charles - all those folks without an HCI/HF degree are just bumbling idiots incapable of performing competently. Especially since
"This question [of user experience] can only be answered with the execution of time consuming and difficult cognitive task analysis, design and testing and redesign and re-testing."
Far too difficult for anyone without mini-guru certification to offer any value. Or not. Especially since they might offer some kind of qualitative insight on the whole user experience, instead of a rigid (and expensive) highly granular task analysis.
Anyways, I just don't see how you can reconcile the two positions. Sure, Jakob's fees are ludicrous, but let's have some acknowledgement of the tremendously skilled practicioners without formal academic background in the field (can anyone say CIQ or Adaptive Path?)
*FWIW, I do have such a degree, but think that it's very secondary to being competent in the field.
Posted by Jess @ 08/17/2001 12:45 PM pst
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Christina observes via email:
It doesn't take a degree. But what does it take?
What does it take to be a good UX/IA person? Here's some quick thoughts, but I'm sure you've all got others to share...
Experience - face it, you really didn't know what the hell you were doing when you started (school can help here, but only a bit)
Empathy - you can really listen. which in turn provides
Understanding - you can see how the users, their goals, the domain, and the business goals come together.
what else?
I have to run, but I'd love to hear others' candidates for "necessary skills/attributes to be a good IA/UX practicioner"
Posted by Jess (again) @ 08/17/2001 12:58 PM pst
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Communication - Talk to people, find out what they're thinking, and share what you're thinking, not just the Visio diagrams and mockups.
and this leads to Consensus-building - If you can be the bridge between design and engineering, between marketing and development, then you're in a position to share the UX approach with everyone. More brains are better!
Pragmatism - My biggest beef with Jakob, this. In a perfect world there might be perfect IA, but there are always time, money, and resource constraints. Learn the difference between a show-stopper and a minor flaw.
To echo Jess' mention of empathy, I'd also say that all IA/UX people should spend some time with computer newbies. I'm not talking about user testing, I'm talking about hanging out with mom and learning what concepts are difficult. I worked tech support throughout college, and honestly, that helps me more on a daily basis than my psychology degree.
Posted by Cindy @ 08/17/2001 01:16 PM pst
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I had completely forgotten about that old post. ROTFLMAO!!!
Posted by christina @ 08/17/2001 01:28 PM pst
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I've been playing around with relationships of more specific skillsets and backgrounds based on Lou Rosenfeld's "Users, Content, Context" model for IA major/minors (what I called IA Areas of Practice.)
Instead of the huge GIF I sent Lou, here's a huge Flash file (bonus is you can zoom)
[warning: work in progress]
IA Skills Cross Training
It seems to me that what Cindy has mentioned and the suggestions I made earlier describe a universal skillset and attributes that all good IA/UX folks need. This is in contrast to the many specific skills that any practicioner might develop (e.g. Contextual Inquiry).
I'm eager to hear more suggestions for the universal set. I'm wondering too: are there any "apprenticeship" skills that are specific, but also necessary for all IAs? (At coffe the other day Dave Robertson of Critical Mass suggested that documentation is one such foundational skill for an IA, while I'd suggest that understanding classification is one) What do you think? Any more broad skills like Communication? Any specific skills like Documentation?
Posted by Jess @ 08/17/2001 02:41 PM pst
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Jess the graphic is fantastic. I would add two elements to your disciplines section: Communication (theory) to the User's backgrounds and Analytic skills (statistics, economics, etc.) to the Context backgrounds. Why? These come from my own background as they were my underground and graduate degrees. I use communication theories and economic ideas to explain efficiency in information flows. It is the belief that good decisions are made from having good information and I find the that the largest hinderance to getting good information is poor communication skills (print, visual elements, or auditory). Another element that hinders use of the information is the transportation of information and the ability to recall that information when needed.
The attributes I would add to the punch is the ability to synthesize and to internalize what the project is trying to accomplish. Synthesizing is taking the elements that the user would like to include and finding ways to make them happen. Many times we are working with clients that are trying to turn tasks that are internal to their organizations in to Internet processes, but the difficulty is the user is not privy to the corporate knowledge that comes from sitting in an organization and there are some limits to the Internet. A usable product will take some synthesizing of these elements. The second attribute is internalization, which inlcudes internalizing the clients requrements, how the user will approach the tasks, and difficulties the user and client may face in getting to this end point. Internalizing lets us see the tasks from many perspectives.
I believe the apprenticeship should include visualization of concepts skills training and learning to compile a digital knowledge base. The visualization skills is important to help a client understand what is being proposed. As many of the concepts and approaches we put forth are not familiar to the client and the client's buy-in to the approach is important for the project to progress, the ability to put these elements in easy to understand terms and visual elements will help greatly. The digital knowledge base is great for sharing lessons learned, storing/searching/reusing documentation, and easy storage and retrieval of a projects decision tree (what decisions affected what elements and outcomes). The knowledge gained in a project is even more valuable if it can be reused or repurposed. Keeping this infomation in a digital store that is searchable or chunked with strong metadata and microcontent will ease the success we find in the future.
Posted by vanderwal @ 08/17/2001 03:39 PM pst
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To add the list of traits I'd add:
Open-mindedness - There's more than One True Way to do things, recognizing different kinds of sites/products mind have different needs.
Yes it should be an obvious point, but then there's Jakob trashing the experimental interfaces on display at SIGGRAPH, thusly: "Breaking new ground for the sake of breaking new ground is dangerous."
Come on... Likely to fail, misguided, just plain stupid...yes. Dangerous, give me a break. Which leads into my next point...
Humility - Admitting you may not know the answer makes you more likely to have empathy and seek understanding.
Knowledge of business - I'm not expecting IAs to have MBAs, but a survey course in marketing is quite useful since it covers the outward "getting stuff to market" aspects of a business that's essential for understanding the bigger picture.
Posted by George @ 08/17/2001 04:05 PM pst
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Second everything George is saying, especially about humility.
Further, I think Mauro's arrogating perceptive empathy and good pattern detection skills - IMHO, the essence of sound IA - to formally-credentialled people is absurd.
At most, you might make an argument that the credential is necessary but not sufficient.
Or you could, that is, if many of the best, most-creative people in the field had no more credential than their own innate delight in structure and pattern.
At any rate, I'm reminded of a comment of Jared Spool's at the February ASIS&T Summit - a comment I believe Mauro would agree with: "usability" does not equal "utility." Even rigorously usable products will fail if there is no need or desire for them.
"Whether a web site is engaging and usable" is only partly (if strongly) "determined by human psychology and physiology." Usability isn't even half the battle. The rest of the challenge, I think it is by now clear, lies in the realm of emotion and intuition.
Posted by Adam @ 08/20/2001 12:46 AM pst
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Another useful skill: Diplomacy (a hybrid of humility and "communication skills"?). I would also suggest an educational style of working with clients. Of course these skills aren't limited to IA/UI work....
Also, does anyone have recommendations for a book/site for those of us whose last statistics class was, hmmm, 8 years ago? Similar to the "Biology for non-majors" course they implemented the year after I took it....
Posted by Melissa @ 08/21/2001 07:33 AM pst
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Ok between Jess' interactive diagram and JJG diagram...I want my big glossy interactive poster!
Other qualities:
Patience - to keep preaching the word to managers and patience to help others get into the field. Also the technologies are changing rapidly we need to be patient with others to keep up.
Zeal - we need to keep the spirit live.
Hope - that even though we're in this slump, we can't beat each other up about where we can and can't go with this field.
And no...I'm not getting religious about our field.
Posted by Madonnalisa Chan @ 08/23/2001 10:02 AM pst
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As a UX person with a Graphic Design/Info design education, I have realized that those of us with a fine arts-oriented education have a key skill that is lacking in many science-educated folks. The skill is the ability to start with a blank sheet of paper and make something from nothing. For designers, this process includes making simulations of manufactured products in preparation for their manufacture. This takes courage, imagination, and resourcefulness. Most of us were taught to make sketches, refine them, color them in, plan them out ahead of time, get guidance from mentors an peers along the way. This requires faith in assumptions and educated guesses to be practical.
Science education involves understanding and discovering phenomenon using the scientific method. With the exception of the hypothesis, science needs to start with something first, then study it. For interfaces, the engineers take the role of critics and inspectors, but often not creators. In the case of UX design, who makes the fodder to be studies? Designers.
Ideally we have both skills on a team.
Posted by john @ 08/24/2001 01:25 PM pst
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It's interesting that the curricula for *most HCI* degrees require reading the same dogmatic texts regardless of the institution granting the certificate.
You know, those "classic" texts written by the gurus. The lime green and blue ones and red white and black teapot ones that are on my shelf and yours...
I looked into a MFA program at RISD last month and realized that the cost would actually be quite reasonable considering I ALREADY HAVE READ AND OWN 9/10ths OF THE REQUIRED TEXT BOOKS. And these were published (with the exception of the teapot book) within the last 6 years. What were we thinking about HCI before then?
/cynacism
Seriously, A LOT of the required reading has been published since 1995. Just think about that.
I think the bigger question is, how can new thought leadership in IA/UX be advanced?
Posted by Carl @ 09/04/2001 10:18 PM pst
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"With the exception of the hypothesis, science needs to start with something first, then study it."
I generally start with users ;)
Seriously, to dismiss the creativity of science educated folks is as ill-informed as to say that those visual designers are all just obsessed over Flash intros and design awards...
Posted by Jess @ 09/07/2001 02:18 PM pst
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