[IxDA Discuss] first interaction designer: success or failure

[Simon Asselbergs]

H! usabilty like-minded people,

I reported earlier that I am the very first interaction designer at a company of 300 employees and I more or less had all the freedom to define my own function. As predicted by many of you the "empowered" designer stuff pops up. And there is another thing about having much freedom, it is noticed by others as well... (feel free to think far fetched thoughts). My bosses have not yet been open to let me show them any graphic stuff yet.

Now they have some troubles understanding that usability and interface design (especially the graphic part) are related somehow. And they more or less restricted me for going into the interface & graphic part area (as they see it as such). Even more Marketing related (you know, software suites, design representing a brand) thoughts are also not so allowed, which is strange because I got a very interesting conversation with the head of Marketing. It seems a sudden wind got blowing those thoughts away... And they even said I was not allowed to use Photoshop nor flash(can you imagine???)... For that kind of stuff they said they would prefer to use PowerPoint.... I wanted to do some demo's  

Anyway. I am now supposed to write a function description for my interaction designer job. As I did some comparitive study, most of them ofcourse mention interface design, conceptualisation and the usage of photoshop or flash (I can litteraly dream actionscript 2). The setting up of a usability lab got moved furter away in time (long term... sounds grimm to me). 

I thought it started with asking for some coorporate video (which is pretty much available to almost everyone, no NDA's there I guess ;-) from some graphic designer (also one of a kind in this company) which is also happened to be at the Marketing department.

What could be happened, and how to deal with that? 
I am now working there for just for 3 weeks.

Cheers 

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