Session Title
What’s in a name?
Presenter
Margot Bloomstein, Nick Finck, Russ Unger
Session Type: Discussion
As an evolving discipline with roots in visual design, advertising, publishing, library sciences, and other areas, interaction design attempts to wrangle nomenclature and organization in an effort to support more intentional, efficient, and desirable user experiences. But with all those influences, is the nomenclature of our industry like a ship at sea, at the mercy of the waves? Do we define ourselves in reaction to the perceptions of our coworkers and clients, or are more absolute titles at work here?
We’ll facilitate a discussion about the role and value of titles and language in our work and brainstorm where to go from here — specifically, toward a constrained taxonomy of titles that represent specific skills and seniority. Eating our own dog food? You bet. When do titles matter? Have you ever bypassed a job listing — or turned down a job offer — because of the language in it? How do our titles inform the salaries we command and the budgets clients allocate to our work? Bring your ideas of what works and doesn’t, and personal experience contrasting what you do with what you call yourself.
Biography
Margot Bloomstein
ISITE Design
Margot Bloomstein is a content strategist at ISITE Design in Cambridge, Massachusetts. She focuses on crafting brand-appropriate user experiences to help clients effectively engage their target audiences and project key messages with consistency and clarity. Her experience encompasses a range of industries and both traditional and social media. A participant in the inaugural Content Strategy Consortium, she speaks regularly on the evolution of content strategy within interactive agencies, and authored the August 2009 article in A List Apart on making the case for content strategy. She holds a BFA in Communication Design from Carnegie Mellon University.
Nick Finck
Blue Flavor
Nick Finck is a user experience professional who has dabbled in the web for over a decade. He specializes in information architecture, interaction design, usability and user research. Nick has created web experiences for Fortune 50 and 500 companies including Adobe, Boeing, Blue Cross / Blue Shield, Cisco, CitiGroup, FDIC, Harpo, HP, IBM, Microsoft, PBS, Peet’s Coffee, University of Denver, and others. He lives and plays in Seattle, Washington, where he’s the owner and director of user experience at Blue Flavor, a web design company that focuses on creating web experiences.
Russ Unger
Draftfcb
Russ Unger is the Director of Experience Planning for Draftfcb, the largest advertising/marketing agency in the Midwest. He has been involved in the user experience design for large-scale public-facing sites for such companies as Sharpie, Metromix, Oprah.com, United Airlines and Hewlett-Packard. He has also taught courses in Web and Interactive/Flash design and is an author and editor for Boxes and Arrows. In addition, he serves on the board of directors for the Information Architecture Institute.
2 Comments
I don’t know if we’ll ever solve the Nomenclature Problem, but I applaud any effort to try to do so. Should be an interesting discussion.
Amy, I agree… we’re not going to evoke a miracle but some discussion would be nice (especially in person) so we can better understand the challenges and needs.