Hi Ali: First off your situation is not unusual - lots of new graduates take first first jobs that aren't in the role they want. It's a very smart move if it gets you inside the right company, or project, since moving within a company is always a zillion times easier than working from the outside. In fact I did the same thing but the other way: I wanted to be a Program Manager, but was only able to get hired as a usability engineer. I took the job, and switched to the role I wanted in a year.
Here's my jaded opinion from 15 years of experience: Test positions are often grueling: Test roles are often high pressure with disproportionately small rewards (explaining high turnover rates). They typically get way more blame than credit or power. If you were interested in becoming an engineer I might say yes, but if you goal is design, stay away from test. You will not be designing much of anything: as a newbie you'll be running test plans made by others, verifying bug fixes, and doing fairly technical things. Every organization is different, and some test orgs are run well and treated great, but knowing nothing about yours my opinion reflects the grand average. Unless you were guaranteed an assignment that was purely testing UI components, don't go this way. Technical Writing - go this way. No doubt. There is less pressure here, which should create more opportunity to network and get a sense for how things work at the company. You are at least creating things (though the volume can make it hard to create with quality). Most tech writers are too far downstream to suggest changes that could easily avoid the need for tons of help/tech writing, which is often extremely frustrating. But on the whole its a safe place to be. No product recalls or web outages occur because of something a technical writer did. You will learn the organization, get some experience out of college, etc. Other notes: 1. You don't mention if all these jobs are at the same company, or on the same project. If one job is in an organization/project with a much better design team, or much stronger design goals, that would change my advice. I'd be a tester at amazon.com, vs. tech writer at wehateusers.com, as at the former there is a path in the org to eventually being on a team that cares about design team, which is probably not true for the later. So if these two jobs are two different projects/companies, keep that in mind. 2. You don't mention how technical you are. If you are not technical at all, you might not even be qualified for the test position, which would make this decision easier. 3. The challenge you didn't mention is how to express all this to your first boss, and also how to nose around the design team to set yourself up for a future job without annoying them. But that's another question. Good luck! -Scott Scott Berkun www.scottberkun.com > Hello members, > I recently graduated in user centered design and have been to a few job > interviews. It is almost impossible to get a job as a user experience > designer, interaction designer or a usability consultant since many of the > corporations here wants to hire someone with several years of experience. > NOKIA has promised me a job as a User Interface Designer since I wrote my > thesis with them, but that position is still not open. Whenever they have > an open position they will contact me, and this can take up to several > months. > > I now have the option between choosing a technical writer position or a > technical tester position. Both positions contain cooperating with a user > experience group but does not allow me to be `creative`. As a technical > writer you are given a document and you need to ensure that the > documentation is user friendly. In the technical tester position you test > a software using a test programme. (usability) ________________________________________________________________ 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
