[IxDA Discuss] The American People / Politicians = The Users / Developers (?)

[Gavin Burke]

Have only recently joined the list and have found the discussions on  
here very interesting, so bear with me if I am way off the mark.
However, looking back through recent posts and watching some video  
lectures posted on interaction design blogs, there seems to be some  
what of an us/them gap between software developers and interaction  
designers.

As an outsider looking in, this relationship has equivalents in other  
fields, particularly architecture. The parallels are that interaction  
designers can be thought of as the architect and the developer as the  
structural engineer.
In simplified terms, the architect does the designs in CAD,  which  
they bring a structural engineer, who then has to make the building  
stay up.
Like the interaction designer and the developer, its a trying  
relationship, where the architect often feels their vision for a  
building is compromised by the structural engineer.
However, this problem is solved when using a Spanish trained  
architect as they are also structural engineers.
Spanish architects are engineers with design training or designers  
with engineering training, which ever way you want to look at it.
When a Spanish architect goes to a structural engineer with a design  
and the ever safe playing structural engineer sees something that is  
tricky to do and says "thats column needs to be moved out of there"  
they can trump the statement with sound structural calculations,  
where as the architect lacking structural engineering training,  
grumbles and goes back and makes changes to the plan, with the end  
result that they feel their design has been compromised. By training  
the architecture as a structural engineer, the dynamic of the  
traditional architect/engineer relationship has changed. The engineer  
respects the architects opinion as a peer. The architect can also  
create better buildings as they can push the limits of the  
construction but don't break them, thus the architects vision almost  
never needs to be changed.

Getting back to the developer/IX designer relationship, I feel a lot  
of the problems can be solved by the IX designer getting training in  
software development and learning the ins and outs of the interface  
framework, be that QT or what ever. I had a look at some of the  
syllabus for IX courses and they don't seem to include computer  
programming or graphics frameworks and until they do, we will end up  
in the same situation as the non structural engineering trained  
architects. In Europe, if you put programming on a design course  
syllabus, as you can imagine the up take for the course deceases  
immediately, so they don't. Universities over here are as much about  
getting people on seats as providing industry with suitable  
professionals. But thats a whole other subject!



On 13 Apr 2008, at 04:11, Oleh Kovalchuke wrote:

>
>  Drucker is right, he describes the way the economy works in a
> desire-fuelled corporate society (the US, especially post WWII).
>
> -----
>
> Why developers are like politicians, when they refer to generic  
> "user":
> They use the term (those, who do) out of
>
> 1) arrogance
> 2) insecurity
> 3) for control
>
> -- three closely related motives.
>
> Relevant quotes from the Chomsky's lecture (Part 2):
> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EVgEQmwb2LA
>
> "The specialized class, the responsible men do the thinking, planning,
> understand the common interest. The 'bewildered herd', they have a  
> function
> too -- to be spectators... The compelling moral principle behind  
> it: The
> mass of the public is too stupid to be able to understand things..."
>
> --
> Oleh
>