Drupallers, meet the Interaction Design community!

We encourage users to post events happening in the community to the community events group on https://www.drupal.org.
pips1's picture

I joined the Drupal community 3 years ago and it has been instrumental in helping me to stay up to date with the latest web trends / developments. Since about 1 year, I've been using Drupal to teach my web engineering students interaction design and information architecture in a practical, hands-on way, by building prototypes with Drupal.

In my opinion, the best kept secret about Drupal is that its power is not so much the technology - a web content management framework. The power lies in the community. Unfortunately, there is still somewhat a divide between designers and developers.

Drupallers, take note of the Interaction Design community (IxDA)! If you haven't already.

I joined the ixda mailing list 3 years ago and it has contributed immensely to my personal growth as an interaction design practitioner. The in-depth design discussions in this community are a true treasure trove.

However, even with 10'000 members, I consider it still somewhat one of the internet's "best kept secrets". IMHO, the current website doesn't succeed well in representing the power of this community. Just recently, IxDA announced plans to re-launch the ixda.org website using Drupal. See Dries Buytaert's blog post about it.

There has been some talk recently at ixda about "open source user experience" and collaborating with the open source movement and learning from each other. I think this is a fantastic opportunity just waiting to happen!

What can the Drupal community do? You can join the ixda discussions and vice-versa, help to make the interaction designers feel welcome in the Drupal community.

A first touching point is the planned Drupal-based IxDA platform (code-named "Conan"), which will likely comprise local groups, an events calendar, member profiles and improved discussion tools. Well, all of that is available right here, right now. I started a group where IxDA members can get first hand experience of features currently available on Drupal Groups, to start to experiment, provide feedback & constructive criticism:

http://groups.drupal.org/interaction-designers-network

Feel free to join the discussions. I hope you agree that Drupal's usability can be improved further. Let's get more interaction designers involved and profit from their expertise!

Last thing: I'm curious, how many Drupalistas are already part of the Interaction Design community? Raise your hands! :-)

Comments

I've been an IxDA lurker for awhile...

Brandonian's picture

I've been an IxDA lurker for awhile now. There's always something interesting in the mailing list to check out. Lots of good discussion.

*raises hand*

leisareichelt's picture

I've been part of the IxDA community for quite a while and have more recently started to become a part of the Drupal community. I was really pleased and excited to hear that the IxDA had chosen Drupal for their new site and will be watching that project with interest. Would be great to touch base with more IxDA-ers in a Drupal/Open Source context :)

leisa reichelt - disambiguity.com
user experience consultant (design research and user centred design)
working with Mark Boulton Design on the drupal.org redesign project

leisa reichelt - disambiguity.com
@leisa

Usability

Group organizers

Group categories

UX topics

Group notifications

This group offers an RSS feed. Or subscribe to these personalized, sitewide feeds: