This is a great thread! One for the archives for sure. My path to IxD started when I was a kid and we got our first C64 I suppose. I immediately took to programming, and when we got an Appl IIe with Logo on it graphics became my main interest.
>From there I got more and more into computers and technology until eventually I found myself trying to choose a university. I had originally planned to go to CompSci at Waterloo... but then I started taking art classes and realized there was a place for somebody who loved both art and technology. I ended up going to Ryerson University for their fantastic New Media BFA program. It was there that I started to learn about interactivity as a discipline and practice. I spent four years conceptualizing and building interactive art. At school I met a lot of really interesting people, got involved in some great organization (www.interaccess.org) and learned a lot about interaction, art, and graphic design. When I started working it was really hard to find a design job that wasn't just graphic design, so I ended up on the technical side for a while doing interface development at interactive agencies. Yet somehow I was always the one fighting with the designers and managers on the user's behalf, which eventually led me to where I am today. I've been working for six years with various titles but always in the area of UI design and development. Now I'm the Interface Lead for a startup called BiblioCommons, designing a new app for public libraries, and I love it. Thanks for this thread pauric! It's been really interesting to read everybody's stories and see how diverse a group we really are. On Dec 18, 2007 3:35 PM, pauric <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Brian Hoffman wrote in another thread: "While many of you have > followed a very straight career path into interaction design, I'm > probably not alone here in having come into this field along a more > winding path." > > I think many of us took the long winding path actually. I was > wondering if we could hear some stories about those pivotal moments in > our careers where we changed from being 'X' in to Interaction > Designers.... > > I fell off the engineering centric wagon in 1996 when I was writing > code for a chip that made the LEDs flash on the front of a 10/100 > ethernet hub, i.e. the 'interface'. I had to solve a number of > technical issues translating the large array of information inside the > chip in to the limited abilities of the LEDs . In looking around for > tools/thinking to correctly solve these problems I chose some UCD > principles. A couple of months later I used the similar principles to > discovered a major usability bug and had a product placed on ship > hold. From there on out I was responsible for advocating the user. > > regards -pauric > ________________________________________________________________ > *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://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe > List Guidelines ............ http://www.ixda.org/guidelines > List Help .................. http://www.ixda.org/help > -- Matt Nish-Lapidus work: [EMAIL PROTECTED] / www.bibliocommons.com -- personal: [EMAIL PROTECTED] / www.nishlapidus.com ________________________________________________________________ *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://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines ............ http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .................. http://www.ixda.org/help
