I’ve traded a few tweets over the past day or two on the subject of good books for web professionals. I use that term to avoid ‘designer’ - as that seemed limiting or possibly a bit arbitrary. I think that information architecture, understanding business requirements and translating them into web site features and functionality, usability/user exerience, interaction design and visual design are all distinct enough that they can be a specialization unto themselves.

Drupal is a quite capable platform, and I've used it quite a lot, both for work and for personal projects. Its Achilles heel though is the admin interface - with ultimate flexibility comes a lot of configuration choices. While the simple solution is to tell the client 'just don't look at that stuff' - it's not ideal, and can be intimidating. Enter some key modules: jstools, form_store and formfilter.

There are some great threads of discussion occurring on the IxDA.org site. One of them is an exploration of the difference between interface and interaction design. In understanding the difference and how to communicate it to peers, clients and students, the discussion turned to education and I'm reposting here what seemed like a relevant post on the topic.

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