[ID Discuss] Interaction design == web design

[id at ourbrisbane.com]

Welcome Michael!

If you wish to use external professionals, for your specific application you may
want to consider using Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) professionals 
that specialise in Computer-Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW).

Unfortunately, all you can learn in short courses will usually be focussed
toward Neilsen's "Discount Usability Engineering" as the techniques (scenarios,
simplified thinking-aloud protocol, and heuristic evaluation as well as the more
recently popular paper prototyping and card sorting) are easy to package and
there's a strong market for them.  Unfortunately, they're also very limited in
scope and not very effective if run by someone without the theory to understand
which combinations of techniques to use, the origins of the techniques, why to
use them, what would confound the results, how to cater for the uncontrolled
variables and indeed, which variables and data matter from each technique for
the context in which it is used. 

I'm not saying that you shouldn't take a short course or two, but just be aware
of their limitations.  They can be a great for doing small, quick and dirty
systems, or as a 'stepping stone' to investigate whether you'd like to learn
more, or even as an overview to help you choose and/or understand what
professionals in the field are doing, but I
 personally would never trust the results of a practitioner who's training was
limited was limited to what they'd read in a few popular usability/information
architecture books and what they'd learned during a couple of 2 or 3 day courses
for the design of a major system. 

If it's a career path you're looking to go down, I'd suggest some post-graduate
university study in Human Factors, Activity Theory (Vygotskian Psychology),
Human-Computer Interaction, Cognitive Psychology, Information Systems, or CSCW -
whichever area takes your interest (all would give you techniques to investigate
the designs of any software, whether it be thin or thick client).

I hope this helps.

Best regards,

Ash Donaldson
"It depends."
User Experience Designer