Handful of Nothing

So, I’m posting this because it shows more or less what I believe to be the relation between the knowledge areas / disciplines. I was searching for more direction on this because I received some feedback (understandable) from IA that tried to say that IA was a lot more than dealing with the information, taxonomy etc. I understand that everyone is trying to always improve their skills, but IA has a name, a function and it’s pretty clear. If you go broader on the subjects, you start to change your position and role in a project and start assuming the others.

Being very honest, job titles are more and more just a requirement for HR department. You can have a focus (eg: usability) but you will be for sure involved on the task gathering and analysis and even on the UI designing itself if need. At least this is what I believe to my team, and what I try to always push to them “you don’t need to be specialist, but also not generalist”. We have a broad knowledge area and we need to not only know how the sub areas relate and work but also have a minimum practice in most of them.

Just closing this quick post : I think more and more in nowday UX teams, that no subject is more or less important to the others, and that is clear that most of the professionals must have a lot of practice and skills from different areas. This is crucial to be able to focus on project, and sometimes to take it forward when only you is the part of the design team.