Interaction Design Group soft launch.
It’s a summer of soft launches as the Interaction Design Group launches their new site. The IxDG (I’m not sure what the x is for, except to say it’s not info design) is modeled along similar lines to AIfIA.
Props to those involved, though I think there’s some wheel reinvention
going on – with tools, job board, and resource library being carbon
copies of AIfIA initiatives.
The duplicate intitiatives (and
the spread of UX related organizations in general) point to the fact
that we’ll hit organizational fatigue in the UX space and need some
consolidation. Right now we have a lot of groups doing some similar
things (AIfIA, ASIS&T, UPA, CHI, STC, AIGA ED, HFES,
IxDG, possibly some InfoDesign group in the near future…). Picking a
professional organization to join or initiative to volunteer for
requires travelling a crowded, even claustrophobic, space for the UX
practitioner who crosses boundaries between interaction design, IA,
info design, etc.
My personal preference is for more interdisciplinary work like UXnet,
so I get benefits across the orgs even if I only belong to one or two.
And I’m also biased to favor the younger organizations like IxDG and
AIfIA – while they don’t have as much infrastructure, they are tailored
to today’s practitioner. [ia/ blogs]