When I learned to drive (many) years ago and I got nervous about the long trail of vehicles building up behind me as I struggled along, my driving instructor would say tell me not to worry about them, for they had all been learners at one time.
Same goes for junior UX folks: everyone has been at that level at some point in the past. When I was a junior designer, I often had to work crazy hours, was often given little opportunity to contribute (other than getting the coffees) and the credit for a couple of the good ideas I was allowed to have were stolen by a design director who had little understanding of online issues. At the time, they told me "that's how things are, your time will come". I'm not sure if that particular golden panacea has arrived as yet, but I don't agree at all with that attitude. In terms of UX awareness, I personally have plenty of respect for the generation born closer to the current technology and whose intuitions are sometimes more insightful than my Punchcard-Spectrum-Atari contemporaries ;-) Of course, "junior" doesn't always equate to "younger", but whatever its composition, this particular cadre of designers is too often undervalued. As I mentioned in my last post, it's probably better to encourage junior team members to develop consulting expertise sooner rather than later so that a) they can get out there and earn some confidence, respect and fees (or else they will become competitors) and b) they have the savoir faire for Technology X when it comes to be the norm for your org. This is a matter of skills and mentoring, which I know can be scarce qualities these days. In return, you nurture a hard-working, enquiring and hopefully bright individual who will move from supporting to leading in just a short while. If the team (and that's a team, not a dictatorship) can break down tasks in a project properly, then it can easily involve a junior team member properly. Thx, Mike Padgett www.mikepadgett.com > >Mike Padgett wrote: >> I like to work in the tried-and-tested law firm format: >> a senior who provides leadership and also operates >> on a strategic level, a number of "associates" each >> with their specialities (interaction design, usability >> testing, requirements gathering) with some overlapping >> of course, and junior members who preferably "rotate" >> their duties to gain exposure to all parts of the process. >> > > I'd like to know what you guys think about junior interaction >designer. In my opinion it's really hard to have the chance to >express yourself without real decisional power. Morever, an ixd >designer should aim to establish strong relations with all the team: >how do you think this can happen if your senior is very capable and >everybody refers to him? >Junior ixd designers seem a little bit contradictory for the role >that this professional figure should represent... > > >. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . >Posted from ixda.org (via iPhone) >http://www.ixda.org/discuss?post=35869 > > >________________________________________________________________ >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 ________________________________________________________________ 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
