Shelter

Tech, philosophy and random musings

You are here: Home / Uncategorized / UX, IA, UCD : Huh?

8 August, 2007 by Alex

UX, IA, UCD : Huh?

For as long as I can remember I’ve been immersed in the User Experience (UX), Information Architecture (IA) and User-centered Design (UCD) genres, long before I knew what they were called and what they embraced. To me, it was just doing what I always do, naturally, instinctively. The last few years I’ve joined the professional circles of these genres to sort of get up to speed, see what I’ve missed, help out where I can, and of course, promote myself and the genre in question in all professional things that I do.

But the more I learn about everything and all, the more I’m coming back to the beginning, back to where it all starts ; mental models of a problem space. Being a very creative person, one of those who love to fix things, love to sort problems out, mental models of problem spaces isn’t something I have to do ; it’s something that’s always there. I don’t have to visually try to understand problems ; they’re there as a default, so I jump straight into solving whatever problem there is.

Well, big mistake ; that’s not how the world works. No, the world wants to know that you indeed have got the problem space sorted out before you do anything, and you have to prove this through a small ton of documentation, convincing and bickering. The reason for this is that worlds modus operandi is the waterfall method, or in agile circles, we talk about chaining ; one thing needs to happen after another thing, and due to people’s time schedules these things always have various degrees of gaps between when one task end and another start. They also need to start after someone has read a document they understand and agree with. Hmm.

To me, it’s always been about fixing something small, check that it’s okay, and continue until the problem is fixed to the point of some satisfaction or success. This is agile methodology in a nutshell ; never embark on blind-date thinking you know exactly what she looks like, how the evening will go, and how lucky you’ll get. You need to take each step at a time, evaluate, make small plans to what to do next, and reiterate until some satisfaction or success.

The UX / IA / UCD disciplines to me always looked like agile development with a user-interface focus to me. It was never meant to be a big bang, big documentation, big plan type of thing. If nothing else, usability testing always tell us that big bang is big waste of time and resources. Yet, the more I walk in these circles the more documentation, meetings and justification I see. What’s up with that? Is it that the initial small group of people have been flooded with a large group of not-so-smart people? Or are we succumbing to the business-need for paper stability? Or is it a lack of trust? Should we – indeed – sell better trust in order to do a better job?

Anyway, I’m slowly backing out of this whole debacle ; I’m so very, very tired of fighting the good cause. Being good in any of these things require the person to have great knowledge across many fields, and an instinctive feel for design, and I simply can’t write a novel every time I come to some conclusion about some arbitrary nugget of wisdom. Consultants and contractors must struggle with this all the time ; justifying their wisdom based on their knowledge rooted in experience and education. Surely there’s a better way. Perhaps, better customers?

Filed Under: Uncategorized

Recent Posts

  • Another bob
  • Another tidbits
  • Philosophical and religious matters
  • Do libraries understand the future? Or how to get there?
  • Before I write what I write before the next time I write

Archives

  • April 2010
  • March 2010
  • February 2010
  • December 2009
  • October 2009
  • September 2009
  • August 2009
  • July 2009
  • June 2009
  • May 2009
  • April 2009
  • March 2009
  • January 2009
  • November 2008
  • October 2008
  • September 2008
  • August 2008
  • July 2008
  • June 2008
  • May 2008
  • April 2008
  • March 2008
  • February 2008
  • January 2008
  • December 2007
  • November 2007
  • September 2007
  • August 2007
  • June 2007
  • May 2007
  • April 2007
  • March 2007
  • February 2007
  • January 2007
  • December 2006
  • November 2006
  • October 2006
  • September 2006
  • August 2006
  • July 2006
  • June 2006
  • May 2006
  • March 2006
  • October 2000

Categories

  • Alsa
  • Application Design
  • Australia
  • Baroque Music
  • Biology
  • Blogging
  • Book Review
  • Business
  • Canberra
  • Chemistry
  • Coaching
  • Communication
  • Conceptual Models
  • Conference
  • Context
  • Cooperation
  • Cosmology
  • Creationism
  • Crows
  • Cute
  • Data Modelling
  • Data Models
  • Debt
  • Dune
  • Ead
  • Ecology
  • Elegant Code
  • Emnekart
  • Environmentalism
  • Everything
  • Evolution
  • Family
  • Film
  • Food
  • Frameworks
  • Fstl
  • Future
  • General
  • General Life
  • Globalism
  • Grace
  • Happiness
  • Harmonica
  • Holidays
  • Humanity
  • Ia
  • India
  • Indiana Jones
  • Intelligence
  • Java
  • Jobs
  • Juggling
  • Kiama
  • Kids
  • Knowledge Representation
  • Kuala Lumpur
  • Language
  • Laptop
  • Leipzig
  • Library
  • Life
  • Life Lessons
  • Linux
  • Localivore
  • Lucas
  • Marcxml
  • Misc
  • Monteverdi
  • Mood
  • Movies
  • Music
  • Music Production
  • Norway
  • Ontology
  • Ooxml
  • Open Source
  • Oslo
  • Oslo Domkor
  • Oss
  • Philosophy
  • Php
  • Planning
  • Programming
  • Programming Languages
  • Proud
  • Rdbms
  • Real Estate
  • Rental
  • Rest
  • Richard Dawkins
  • Salut Baroque
  • Sam
  • School Closures
  • Semantic Web
  • Semantics
  • Soa
  • Soa Roa Woa Rest Soap Ws Architecture
  • Sound
  • Spielberg
  • Status
  • Stupidity
  • Systems Thinking
  • Talk
  • Technology
  • Terje Kvam
  • Test Driven Development
  • Tidbits
  • Tmra
  • Tmra 2008
  • Topic Maps
  • Ubuntu
  • Ubuntu 9.04
  • Ucd
  • Uncategorized
  • Universe
  • Ux
  • Vista
  • Wollongong
  • Work
  • Working From Home
  • Xml
Copyright © 2021 Shelter.nu