After a long hiatus from weblog consumption, and my own writing, I’m back. The opportunity to write again comes as a result of a two week PTO (paid time off) from work at Adobe. Needless to say - the dearth of posts on this blog is the all the evidence needed - my job as a design manager keeps me far more occupied than my former role as a Sr. Experience Designer. In any case, I’ve got a bit of breathing room to more deeply explore the greater world of experience design, to reflect, and to weigh in on it all again.
As fate would have it I read Christopher Fahey’s post on the recently raging debate between Information Architects and Interaction Designers about what it is that they each do. The post is essentially Fahey’s take on a plenary speech Jesse James Garret gave at the most recent IA Summit in Memphis. In the speech, JJG uttered this beautifully controversial sentence:
There are no information architects. There are no interaction designers. There are only, and only ever have been, user experience designers.
And with that, the community was off and running. The IxDA discussion list exploded, people conducted time-consuming twitter conversations to publicize their views, and well, nothing really changed. That’s right. After all the flutter, IAs kept on doing what they do, Interaction Designers kept on doing what they do, and people who title themselves “User Experience Pathfinders” (whatever the hell that means) kept on doing what they do.
The point I’m trying to make is that all this conversation about naming that which we do often is a waste of time because it occurs within a tiny echo chamber. Now, if Bruce Nussbaum followed the IxDA list with baited breath, it would be a different story. But he doesn’t. Instead, this cabal of designers who have read all the same books, who frequent all the same blogs, who go to all the same conferences and to all the same parties, they matter to themselves. And that’s not a bad thing. But it’s also not necessarily effective.
From what I’ve gathered about this debate about titles, the shared ultimate goal is to get a bigger seat at the table. It’s to make more of a difference. And if that is truly the case, there are more effective ways than internal debate to attain such a goal.
The number one way to effectively get a bigger seat at the table? It’s simple: delivery undeniably valuable results. If what you deliver helps drive what is built towards a more user-centered solution that is useful, usable, and enjoyable, and if the way you do it meshes well with the team that is building it, congratulations! You’ve just put yourself in a more probable position to have the leaders ask you to work on another project. And provide yet another successful engagement, the more likely you are to be invited back again. Ultimately, if you deliver valuable results repeatedly, the more the organization trusts you, the more your seat at the table becomes more secure, and the more likely you are to lead instead of follow marching orders.
Of course it’s more complicated than that. But in essence, it’s not.
