What'sup?

November 25, 2002 | 0 Comments

Still busy with usability tests, this week I start working with some of the MDs and our secure medical staff extranet. The design requirements and tools here are particularly inflexible, so it’s should be interesting. In my spare time - ha - I’ve been trying to wrap my head around OSX’s Apache server, PHP, MySQL and that darn Terminal. It’s not as easy (at least for me) as it sounds.

A few good reads from the weekend:

Adam Greenfield’s “What Lies Beneath: Some Essentials of Capitalism for Designers and IAs” — a little lesson in business and how it effects designers and IAs. It’s a bit heavy, but carries a solid message about the bottom line. A quote:

This eternal drive to maximize revenue affects you-the-IA and you-the-designer in many ways, some obvious and some less so, on at least two levels. In a neat little fractal regression, your shop’s work must benefit its clients, and your work must benefit the company you work for.

Also from v-2: A bit about Experience Design vs. Information Architecture. I found this humorous. Being neither strictly an Information Architect or an Experience Designer, but thinking that both “fields” if you can call them that, are related and yet somewhat hard to define in the first place, I saw lots of good points in there from both sites, but really enjoyed it the same way I’d enjoy a hockey fight. I tend to side with Nathan as he seems to be grounded a bit more strongly in the real world - but then again to the designer who actually works for a living this kind of talk is just so much crap. There are also some good comments on this over at Peter Merholz’s site.

Another fun one - Confessions of a Designer, from Doug Bowman.

Filed under: Web General