[IxDA Discuss] [Local IxDA] Announcing IxDA Hong Kong

[Pedro-Jorge Adler]

Hello All,

This is a very exciting moment! Yesterday we had our kick off F2F
meeting in Hong Kong in the roof top of the Fringe Club. There were
people coming from Philips, Yahoo, HSBC, Apogee HK, Kaizor and Hong
Kong Jockey Club, and also from the Poly University of HK. A good
start, no?

We had some drinks and a good discussion about IxD in HK, what we do
and how complicated is to explain what we do to companies (see below
other topics).

Thanks to Daniel Szuc (HK UPA Chapter) and Nicole Schadewitz (IxD in
Poly University) for helping to spread the word.

Greetings,
Adler



Other topic include: (remember that the context here is HK not Europe or US)

- Next F2F and other events

- What does really Interaction Design mean? How different is it from
other disciplines like Usability, User Experience, Information
Architecture, ...?
We, that are in the field, know the difference but the problem arises
when we try to explain what we do to other people, companies and
organisations.

- One big community instead of many small groups ?!? All the
communities/organisations above aim to design good products. Each
discipline certainly deals with different aspects (behaviour,
interaction, usability, experience, information, ...) and it makes
sense to have these disciplines but the message to the outer world is
difficult to pass and promote. Companies are confused about the
differences of each discipline. (there are sometimes even "funny" job
ads that mix titles, make up new titles or have descriptions
completely different from the title).

Companies want to have good products but they don't know which people
to hire (IxD? Usability? UCD? HCI? UX? IA? ID?...). 98% of the
companies in HK are small medium enterprises so they get really lost
with so many "different" disciplines. We aren't making the life easy
for our customer, i.e., companies interested in our services.

Should we promote and have more co-shared local meetings instead of
many small groups? What's the front end that companies see?

They want better products but they get lost in this usable, user
friendly, useful, ... world of disciplines!