Fred, are you kidding? How can you compare a week, a week there conference experiences to the experience of school? What are you doing is saying that a vacation is the same as living there and learning the language? It ain't!
Ok, I'm NOT a degree holder and I miss it every day of my career. I look at people who have degrees with HUGE respect. Their level of depth of understanding theory and praxis shines a lot louder than my own and I have some 15 years experience in the field. I believe that someone with 13 years experience 2 years of grad work is definitely doing better than myself. Yes, as Andrei has pointed out there are routes for self education, but there is something that I appreciate when I speak with people who have taken that time. I do think though that specific courses are required and unfortunately I do not know how to do these remotely. The main one being studio courses, where you sit at your table day in and day out for 20 hours a day cranking on your projects in a room filed with 15 peers doing the same thing, with constant review/crits led by a master in the course. Working in a design studio today I have to say in my career path this is the one element of education I miss the most. The theory stuff I think is easy to pick up on one's one. The deep level of personal and creative exploration, studio experience, and concentrated craft practice is what a design degree offers most. I would say that if you have an undergrad degree in design -- not HCI, or other UX related discipliens, but specifically any design discipline - studio work required -- then you have less a need for a grad class. I know Fred was talking about jobs that require degrees, but honestly if you can't get around that with some good old LinkedIn networking then you aren't deserving of the job. ;-) Seriously though, except for the largest most inflexible organizations it is pretty easy to get around a degree requirement. As for networking, I have taken advantage of other people's uni-networks enough to see how different they are from my standard conference networks, but as my example shows, in this day and age it is pretty easy to just ride on someone else's social network coat-tails. ;-) If you don't have a degree, and I was looking to hire you, I'd be looking for deep understanding of theory, really good craft, and the ability to communicate your design process--not your research and analysis process. -- dave . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Posted from the new ixda.org http://www.ixda.org/discuss?post=30391 ________________________________________________________________ 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
