[IxDA Discuss] Now Hiring Leonardo DaVinci?

[jackbellis.com]

Jared,
I read your article carefully and I think we are making separate, not 
conflicting points. My hypothesis is that algorithms and art are such rarely 
combined skills that they are, to use your article's term, 
compartmentalized.

Our differences hinge on your article's inclusion of "visual design" in the 
continuum that comprises the range of general Ux. It's correct to include 
it, but there's a broad sweep to visual design from relatively objective 
interaction design considerations of grouping and positioning, to the other 
extreme that I'm focusing on: creative synthesis and often subjective 
aesthetics.

I don't feel that your analogy to physicians applies to my argument. 
Specialist surgeons learn the general expertise of physiology (helpful as 
you mention, even to deliver babies) but programmers do not, for instance, 
learn the color wheel.

-Jack


----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Jared M. Spool" <jspool at uie.com>
>
> I recently wrote this post in our blog:
> Specialists vs. Generalists
> http://www.uie.com/brainsparks/2006/09/08/specialists-vs-generalists/

> It seems unfair to me to judge an organization who can only afford
> generalists as being unrealistic or unpractical. Sounds to me to be quite
> the opposite.
>