–Engage

These pairs of pairs are really related to a problem facing the design and software engineering communities right now. They are all too often used as synonyms when in fact they are far from it. I find as I write an article like this, I am not saying anything new, but for some reason, it feels like a semantic understanding is missing from the current discourse around Agile methodologies.

First, let me say that I am a big fan of the spirit of Agile methods in many forms and through the push that my current employer has given me, I really see a lot of value, and have seen things work really well when Agile methods is taken to be a philosophy of running an organization through a product lifecycle. I like it. I like how it keeps me on my toes, how I feel like my mind is always engaged. It’s like I’m working for a consultancy again, but with all the benefits of being in house for a product company.

That being said, this semantic confusion that I’d like to discuss happens at my company as much as it does anywhere else in the world. This is a problem because the current discourse of Agile Methods is undercutting a very big part of product development: quality.

Notice I didn’t say design. “Design” is a feefdom at best and is not the goal of product development. Quality to me is an important goal in product development and it is effected by and leads to many different things way beyond the scope of what I can do here in a short blog article.

Let’s go deeper now and see what I’m talking about.

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Don Norman recently put up a post entitled, “Emotionally-centered design”. In it he hypothesizes about the recent glut of Rich Internet Applications (RIAs) and why they seem to be so loved.

The immediacy of response is both fun and useful. The fluidity of graphics is engaging. These are visceral experiences: viscerally exciting websites. The traditional map sites, with sneible, reasonable interaction and instructions are behaviorally appropriate, but they lack excitement. I belive that a good deal of the visceral ecitement comes from the graceful movements

EXACTLY!!!!!

While my article in <interactions> and other blog posts earlier last year speaks about aesthetics on a different scale, this is just another dimension of how interaction design has aesthetic qualities that can add engagement and emotional responses beyond what we have been stuck with thus far with non-rich web-apps.

Maybe now that Don is talkin’ his clout will get our bosses talkin’. What can we do to help you out Don?

Enclosed is a copy of Eric Reiss’ Web Dogma as proposed at the IA Summit ’06 in Vancouver this past March. I’m not so sure I’m buyin’ it … Let me explain.
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Apple does Windows AND they’ll even teach you how to do it!!!!

I am just beside myself! I’m soooo pissed I just bought this new Dell for work b/c I needed a real windows box! Ouch!.