Jared Spool Affirms What I’ve Been Saying Here All Along

So the basic thrust of my entire blog is that Advanced Web professionals need to move toward an industry standard. Part of the way I think we get there is by sharing roles and knowing everything about something and something about everything when it comes to the different roles that team members play when creating a successful user experience.

This brings me to my VERY first blog post “WHY it all matters online.” As Jared Spool described today in his very awesome “Secrets Behind Designing Great User Experiences” at the UIE Roadshow 2009 in Washington, D.C., general specialists are really critical for creating a successful user experience.

Now Jared wrote an article about this in December of 2007 (so he was WAY ahead of me). In December of 2007 I was just figuring out how to really CRAFT for the Web. But the roles are still the same and they still apply to MY RULE about finding people who can all share some of the heavy lifting. Each of the different roles is important; but that doesn’t mean that 1 person has to fit into each role. You can actually wear 1, 2 or 3 hats when it comes to UX (User Experience Design). It also means that there will be natural checks and balances on each project.

For example, I work with an Information Architect at one of my clients. I know how to do IA. I’ve done it for almost every Website I’ve written. But by collaborating with him, he and I get the chance to have two sets of eyes looking at our work and we bounce ideas off each other. He could set up an agency doing IA for the Web, but I doubt he could write for the Web. I do IA work for small-ish sites but I would never think about doing the kind of broad strategy IA work he is doing. Point is, we help each other out by sharing our expertise and experience, hopefully creating a better experience for both our users and our clients.