I love and hate this thread. There have been many great points made about the tradeoffs of working in a vibrant area, about what interactive design is, and how horrible it can be to find the right job. But as I read this thread it pains me.
I%u2019m a recent graduate of a European design school and I%u2019m currently looking for employment. I am that young kid who would gladly live in a cardboard box to be out in the valley and working on exciting projects, yet so far there%u2019s only been rejections and glimpses of future contractor work. So it%u2019s quite hard to see the disconnect. I%u2019d like to offer up one observation. Just as the IxD community has had trouble defining Interactive Design, my school had difficulty choosing the types of projects to develop throughout the program. Since the field is so varied, we touched upon many types of interactive design projects while never delving too deep into the technical aspects of each category. Instead an overall emphasis on theory, process, and the artistic elements of interactive design were stressed as those elements can be applied to any possible future project. While, I believe, this was an apt way to instruct the program at this current point in time, it has left us students with a lagging technical skill set. The backgrounds of the student body were as diverse as one could imagine and therefore students as still able to only apply for positions similar to their previous backgrounds. As I currently browse jobs, many jobs emphasize simply the web nature of interactive design and therefore the only students from my school who would fit into the mold that HR builds are those who already had a background in web development and programming. Perhaps this is another element to think about. There are schools attempting to teach the discipline, but until the categories are defined further, it will be hard to train students on a highly technical level. I would like to see companies start to give a little and realize something along the lines of what Andrei said where interactive designers do not code and also work along side of graphic designers. So far it seems that this mentality would surely lead to a rejection email. Also, in general, I am saddened to see that the areas of experience design, environmental design, and installation design are less prevalent in the United States than over in Europe. In my mind this is quite ironic, because as usual, the funding for substantial and innovative projects could easily be found stateside. Also, I would say that a fair amount of my classmates prefer these areas as opposed to UI/IA design. But if anyone has suggestions for the unemployed side of this debate, please send them over. I agree that it would be nice to have a simple and secure resume posting system on here. I don%u2019t believe I%u2019m the only inactive designer around here. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Posted from the new ixda.org http://www.ixda.org/discuss?post=26170 ________________________________________________________________ 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
