Monday, May 17, 2004

Interaction Design for Offshore Development

I guess I have a soft spot for Alan Cooper because he's sort of the godfather of interaction design as a discipline, and his book was influential in getting my current position created at Bridges. I sometimes disagree with their stuff, but it does get me thinking.

Today's Cooper newsletter has an interesting article about designing products for offshore development. In my previous ruminations on outsourcing, I left out my belief that interaction design may be one of those jobs less likely to be sent offshore. Not to say that some parts of the design process couldn't easily be exported, but someone still has to decide why a product should be built and what exactly it should do (how it looks, behaves, functions). Although the article focuses mostly on creating documentation for outside developers, it also reads like a manifesto for good interaction design in general, and contains gems for instructional design or e-learning production regardless of where the code is written.

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