I absolutely agree, Mark. In fact, I think one of the major failures
of the whole portfolio model is that human beings react strongly and
vicerally to pictures, even when they're assessing processes. We are
just as guilty as other people of thinking "I don't like the blue"
when we see a screen, and even if you treat an interview as a design
review, you're stuck with that original reaction and the candidate is
stuck with trying to overcome it. More to the point, as you point out,
complex interactions do not translate well to static formats, and User
Experience is not principally about pictures.
When I'm interviewing, I tend to treat requests for a portfolio as an
Employer Intelligence Test....A remarkable number fail.
Katie
Katie Albers
Founder & Principal Consultant
FirstThought
User Experience Strategy & Project Management
310 356 7550
[email protected]
On Jan 15, 2009, at 11:17 AM, mark schraad wrote:
In a standard one hour interview I think it is pretty easy to get to
the
heart of deliverables such as use cases, process flows, wireframes
and even
taxonomies and nav structures. A 30 minute white board session with
some
well thought out problem statements or project briefs help.
Complex interactions aren't much help in static form anyway. I know
I am in
the minority here... but regardless of whether you are interviewing
visual
designers, interactive designers or information architects, if your
are
interviewing for user experience, I think you cane learn much more
from
conversation than viewing a picture book or web site (or resume for
that
matter).
None of this, however, helps the sometimes clueless (to IA IX UI and
UX)
recruiter. That being said... there are some very sharp recruiters
that
specialize in our field and subscribe to this list.
Mark
On Thu, Jan 15, 2009 at 1:35 PM, Will Evans <[email protected]>
wrote:
Along these lines, this discussion came up a lot this morning on
Twitter -
Imagine a world in which you work full time creating a lot of
deliverables,
sketches, wireframes, sitemaps, task flows, user stories, but
because of
the
NDA and various work product ownership things signed - you can
never show
any work - none of your portfolio. Technically, having done this
for 14
years now, ever single deliverable I have ever done is locked up
behind
some
legal contract, and I am pretty sure that is true for most IxDers out
there.
So how do you walk into an interview - legally - when we can't show
anything
we've ever done. There is no "you can't show any of this
proprietary work
unless you are applying for another job," - clause - and we are all
guilty
of this because sitting on the other side of the table - we all
expect
candidates to show a portfolio (even though we know they legally
can't - so
we are asking them to break a contract to get a job), and then
before we
give them a job, we say "We know we wanted to see your portfolio to
get
this
job - but if you ever leave here, you can't show any work done
here to
anyone else - ever" It seems insane, hyprocritical, legally
precarious if
not bordering on pathalogical. Yet we all perpetuate this little
"don't ask
don't tell" policy as if everything is hunky dorey.
~ will
"Where you innovate, how you innovate,
and what you innovate are design problems"
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Will Evans | User Experience Architect
tel: +1.617.281.1281 | [email protected]
aim: semanticwill
gtalk: semanticwill
twitter: semanticwill
skype: semanticwill
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
On Thu, Jan 15, 2009 at 1:21 PM, Jen Randolph <[email protected]>
wrote:
Scott:
Thanks for your detailed reply! I too feel much better about the
interview when the interviewer has me design something on the
spot. I
can talk about my work until I'm blue in the face, but I feel like I
can really *show* the interviewer my strengths if I'm sketching
something out for them.
As an interviewer, though, I'd like to ask you this question: when a
candidate for a job has come to your office for the interview, how
do
you like to see them present their work samples to you? Maybe a
sketchbook, maybe a nice binder full of work, or something along my
method - loose pages that can be spread out? Or maybe has there been
any in-person presentation of work that has stood out to you in the
past, and that you wish more candidates did?
I'm sort of trying to find out if there happens to be any sort of
"standard" for this when it comes to the IxD field. Many of my
graphic design friends bring a book to their interviews, and leave
some samples and a business card behind; my motion graphics friends
bring a demo reel. I want to know if something like this exists for
IxD interviews.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Posted from the new ixda.org
http://www.ixda.org/discuss?post=37179
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