[IxDA Discuss] "Human Factors" angle on our field

[Billie Mandel]

Happy Friday all - 

 

At risk of opening the "defining the damn thing" can of moray eels, I
have a related question for you:

 

Assumption: Design people - even good ones - can come from an
interaction design background/angle, a front end developer angle, an
information architecture angle or an HCI angle, among others.  It's
pretty easy for me to relate to/evaluate/learn from/grok those design
folks who show up here at IxDA, and/or whom I might see at the IA Summit
or at CHI.  Those three professional groups might get scrappy over
territory sometimes, but there's enough in common in our Venn diagram
that we can have interesting and useful conversation over a pint - or
that I can understand and evaluate their resume or background.

 

So what about those Human Factors folk?  The ones who have a Human
Factors degree or professional membership, and who AREN'T also
participating in the IxD or IA-centered organizations.  My observation
del giorno: they seem to speak a different language, even when they're
talking about the same core set of tasks (i.e. creating/evaluating
software/web sites to make sure they are efficient, easy, or fun for
people to use).  

 

Has anyone else noticed this?  How have you handled the "translation,"
when you need to communicate with or assess someone who lives in that
universe?  Have you hired any folks like this to do design, or worked on
a team with them - and has it been a success?  Any "bilingual" HF/IxD
people able to help me out here?

 

Cheers, 

- Billie

 

*   *    *    *    *   *   *  

Billie Mandel

Manager, User Experience Design & Research

OPENWAVE

 billie.mandel at openwave.com <mailto:billie.mandel at openwave.com>