Milan Guenther — Wed, 01 Apr 2009 23:07:08 GMT

Chris, thanks very much for your comment. There are a lot of discussions going on on the scope of disciplines like IA and IxD, and if UX is the sum of the two or the two plus Visual plus Usability plus … whatever. I think every *designer* should care about how the product he works on is perceived, so a good Graphic Designer will also care about the representation of information, and a good IA or IxD may use something visual like photography to “render” the concept.

Nick, immersion is an important point, and photography is imho a great medium to strive for it, to start a “visual dialogue” with the user. This may also be used for persuasion or for creating something like a social space in applications. In dashboards and other information media, the use of photos as decoration is very poor in most cases. If there is no consequent, holistic design wherein the photography plays an important role for either information or interaction, a design without photos is always better than one with a poor integration of the medium. Have a look at this book review for a short intro on visual dashboard design: http://eric.jain.name/2006/01/02/information-dashboard-de…

Boxes and Arrows: Comments by Milan Guenther