Hi Wesley, This is a slightly slow response, but hopefully not too late to be of interest.
I have a Master's from UC Berkeley's iSchool, albeit acquired during the interval when it was called SIMS. My situation was a little different from yours, more of a career shift, but nonetheless I would recommend it. Because it's an interdisciplinary program, you have a lot of opportunity to shape it to your own interests. For myself, I had specific goals going in, but also found that the core courses led me to some new interests. You can even take courses outside the program, whatever UC Berkeley has to offer, as long as you can make a case for how it fits. For instance, I took a course on cognitive metaphor theory in the Linguistics department, and wrote a term paper on the role of basic-level metaphor in web design conventions . There are definitely down sides to pausing in mid-career to go back to school, but personally, I have no regrets. Feel free to contact me if you have questions or would just like to hear more about my iSchool experience :) Cheers, Jean-Anne On Mon, 8 Oct 2007 13:01:26, Wesley Hall <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > A pragmatic question. Hopefully it will help some other lurkers on > this board :) > > If you're an "old guard" designer with 10 years experience but no > formal design training, is it worth it to attend d.school? > > I'm confident in my "design thinking" at this point. > > But I'd like to: > A. Brush up on core design visual design skills > B. Play with technologies I don't have to design for in my job > C. Interact collaboratively with lots of bright folks who don't work > for my company > D. Get a graduate degree so that I stay competitive in my field > > Is that a match of d.school or not? > > I live in SF. I keep debating whether it'd be worth it to attend > Stanford's program. I'm also curious about Berkeley's iSchool, > though I never hear anyone mention it. > > We've hired a couple of CMU grads (from the Master's program) and > they keep telling me I already know most of the stuff they were > taught in school :) That's nice to hear, but I'm curious what > others think. > > -Wesley > > > . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . > Posted from the new ixda.org > http://gamma.ixda.org/discuss?post=21093 > > > ________________________________________________________________ > Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! > To post to this list ....... [EMAIL PROTECTED] > Unsubscribe ................ http://gamma.ixda.org/unsubscribe > List Guidelines ............ http://gamma.ixda.org/guidelines > List Help .................. http://gamma.ixda.org/help > ________________________________________________________________ *Come to IxDA Interaction08 | Savannah* February 8-10, 2008 in Savannah, GA, USA Register today: http://interaction08.ixda.org/ ________________________________________________________________ Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ....... [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe ................ http://gamma.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines ............ http://gamma.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .................. http://gamma.ixda.org/help
