A few years ago I read an article in My Career about whether your job has a personality. It goes on about introverts and extroverts but it struck a chord with me at the time. I remember my good friend Tamara Graham telling me why she left her established career in teaching. It was during an overseas holiday, where she was outdoors all day, taking snaps that she decided that she hated being inside, staring at the same walls and what she really wanted to do was travel around and take photos.
Mathew Hodgson, an IA/UX type, writes and speaks about agile project management. I have never done an agile project, and this is not a piece about agile versus waterfall. What struck me to think about that article and Tamara’s story was a blog post and graphic that Mathew published a few weeks ago about careers and the Agile team.
I really appreciate when people share their definitions of job descriptions within the web industry. I just finished reading this post, Why front-end developers are so important to the future of businesses on the web [Sep 24, 2009] by Paul Carvill, a web developer for the Guardian.
The article articulates the role and value of the front end web developer and spurns a debate of sorts in the comments (now closed) between the generalists and the specialists.
Will Peavey’s comment cuts close to the bone, (mine specifically!) when he says:
“I think being a front-end dev should be a prerequisite to doing IA/UX work. In my experience I’ve seen lots of IA/UX/Usability “experts” that come from art school or academic backgrounds, and attempt to design interfaces that look good as Photoshop mockups, but fail in the browser.”
Ah yes, I must confess to 4 years of art school, and only rudimentary and increasingly fading HTML/CSS skills.
At an IA-Peers Sydney meet up this week I discussed what it is that I do as a web producer. The group also chatted about the job titles Information Architect and Experience Architect. Anyone in this industry will know that job titles change all the time. This is something I would like to cover in this blog; speak to other professionals and get them to define their job title.
I thought I would start with my job title: Producer. For this post I am republishing an email I sent in September 2008 to a student of a friend who teaches Online Journalism at UTS.
Hi Exxx
Here is a little run down for your student who is interested in being a web producer.
Comments