[IxDA Discuss] Semantics of The Elements of UX

[Katie Albers]

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>
>I am not sure if you are getting the point of Gould. When things 
>don't make sense to others and your vision brings clarity... then you 
>have something. The notion of hard or easy seams misplaced here. Are 
>you going through the motions of a rote process??? Or are you taking 
>the time and effort to push your personal capabilities or expand the 
>knowledge base, toolset or conceptual framing of the discipline? In a 
>field such as IxDA, increasing its importance in the eyes of the 
>uninformed is a charge that each of us should take on 
>enthusiastically. If it is not important enough for that sort of 
>effort... why would you even be on the bus?
>
>Mark

Well, I'm absolutely certain for a variety of reasons that I 
understand what he meant. What I'm not sure of is precisely what you 
mean.

The origin of this part of the discussion was framed in terms of hard 
vs. easy.  In this context, "hard" appears to mean things which the 
person in question finds difficult, and or unpleasant to complete. So 
far as I can tell, it's been unrelated to complexity, expansiveness, 
contribution, personal learning or other factors. From all 
appearances "It's hard" has been used as a synonym for "It found it 
unpleasant."

Actually, it's been my experience that there is a high positive 
correlation between the group of people who pursue a practice by rote 
and the group of people who consider it "hard".

Mark is right, though, hard and easy are not particularly useful 
concepts here, if for no other reason than that they tend to lead to 
confused context.

My point, though, is very simple: As a discipline we are poorly 
served if we speak of what we do as "Easy" outside that discipline. 
It gives people the impression that anyone can do it...and if that 
were true the entire Web would be a much different space. Not to 
mention all the other contexts of UX. We do, however, suffer under 
the pervasive belief that UX is easy, i.e., anyone can do it.

Expertise and experience tend to be harder and harder to isolate the 
further you get in a profession. If I were to say "I haven't done 
anything hard" it would mean "I almost unconsciously applied a body 
of knowledge gained through 15 years of study, courses, reading, 
experience with very similar issues, the collective knowledge and 
wisdom of those I've worked with over the years and a variety of 
other resources and this is the best response under these 
circumstances." What people who aren't well-versed in UX will 
probably *hear* is "Oh, it's no big deal. Anyone can do it." I'd much 
rather see us think and talk in terms of complexity, new problems, 
conceptual thinking, and so forth.

kt