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Recent and relevant: how writers and designers should work togeth er
Subject:Recent and relevant: how writers and designers should work togeth er From:"Hart, Geoff" <Geoff-H -at- MTL -dot- FERIC -dot- CA> To:"TECHWR-L" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com> Date:Thu, 18 Jul 2002 09:15:16 -0400
I've been a big fan of Jared Spool and his group at User Interface
Engineering for some time now, and recommend signing up for his free
newsletter. I've yet to receive any spam from doing so, and I do get lots of
good, well-researched information. The latest issue of UIEtips (sign up at
www.uie.com/free.htm) included an article on collaborative design. The
following quote is one you can bring to the attention of your developer
colleagues (many of whom know and respect Alan Cooper's work):
"Without question, the most effective composition I've seen is our
configuration at Cooper. We have two people who form the core of the team,
doing the research as well as the design. One team member is the Interaction
Designer, who is primarily responsible for driving the interaction design
concept forward and proposing ideas: "It should be like this." The other
role, the Design Communicator (or "DC"), was initially conceived as someone
who just documented the design but wasn't really a "designer." We found that
because the DC was sitting in the design creation meeting and thinking about
how to explain the concept, he or she asked questions that helped clarify,
refine, and guide how the design was evolving. It became obvious that the DC
was a full participant in the design process, and was therefore a designer,
too. The dynamic between these two roles is very powerful and makes the team
incredibly efficient."
That DC role sounds an awful lot like what we do, doesn't it? The complete
text of the interview with Kim Goodwin, author of this quote, can be found
at: www.uiconf.com/uie-7/goodwin_interview.htm
--Geoff Hart, geoff-h -at- mtl -dot- feric -dot- ca
Forest Engineering Research Institute of Canada
580 boul. St-Jean
Pointe-Claire, Que., H9R 3J9 Canada
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