I was reading the discussions on Elegant Hack and other places about "big IA" and "little IA" when I found this link which I think uses an interesting metaphor to describe the work I do.

From IAwiki: "This idea of a different role particularly resonates with me, as I’ve been fascinated with the concept of what I call the “information designer as director.” In other words, as information products become increasingly complex, involving text, graphics, sound, and/or motion video, will information design—or some variant of it—become more and more like making a film? Dale Spender notes that the “days when the author could ‘write’ simply in the medium of print are numbered. … Multimedia will be taken for granted by the electronic initiates. They will want words and sounds and images. Their narratives will be less like a book, more like a film.” [1] Similarly, in talking about interactive systems, Brenda Laurel notes that it may be likely that the designer of interactive systems “will be a team of individuals who, like the playwright, director, actors, technicians, and scenery, light, and costume designers in the theatre will contribute different skills toward the realization of a common vision.” [2] Naturally there will still be a need for “traditional” information design products. But what happens when the complexity of the product increases? In this world, perhaps the “little” information designer is the specialist; the one who may be concerned with issues of typography, sentence length, or type of information graphics. It might then be the “big” information designer who ensures that the vision for a large or otherwise complex product is carried out over the lifetime of the project. He or she might be the person who facilitates communication between specialists whose skills and language can interfere with meaningful dialog. He or she is the director. "

Read: IAwiki: FilmDirectorMetaphor

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Categorized: Work and Working , Teams

Tagged: , Teams

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