Having attended design school, completed a doctorate in HCI, taught graduate students in design, and being currently in a part-time MBA program, I believe there are few technical skills that you can't learn from books or online nowadays with some self-discipline. Granted, putting yourself in a classroom gains you access to a priceless network of classmates and instructors and the nurturing aspect of classroom collaboration as already mentioned. Yes, you can look forward to getting great feedback during design critiques from talented peers along with some motivation thrown in by grades and competition. These things cannot be replicated by an online program currently. But if they don't matter to you and your primary goal is to improve your technical skills or simply claim a graduate degree as a job qualification, then it'll probably make more economic sense to seek self-learning options or a distance program. The proof is in the pudding -- there are many famous designers who did not have a traditional design education (e.g. David Carson). Disclaimer: this is coming from someone who loves school. :-)
________________________________ From: Will Evans <[email protected]> To: Dan Saffer <[email protected]> Cc: IxDA Discuss <[email protected]> Sent: Wednesday, January 21, 2009 10:50:31 AM Subject: Re: [IxDA Discuss] Masters Programs in Interaction Design and Design Management at University of Kansas "There's a reason consultants fly all over the place to meet face to face with clients or why distant teams occasionally still meet face to face: because nothing yet technologically is as high-bandwidth as being together in person" I am presenting in front of stakeholders tomorrow. I could easily present all the wireframes, visual designs, stories in the format of an open narrative via WebEx and conference call - but I would miss the most important thing - the looks on stakeholder's faces as they are walked through the first iteration of the application - I can see frustration, confusion, cluelessness as well as excitement and elation - Without having videocams trained on every person and displayed in 10 different cam windows on my desktop could I get that most important of feedback. Same thing with design critiques - I would not say it HAS to be face to face - I just dont know if anything is available that brings about that level of intimacy which is important. ~ 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] http://blog.semanticfoundry.com aim: semanticwill gtalk: semanticwill twitter: semanticwill -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- On Jan 21, 2009, at 10:43 AM, Dan Saffer wrote: > There's a reason consultants fly all over the place to meet face to face with > clients or why distant teams occasionally still meet face to face: because > nothing yet technologically is as high-bandwidth as being together in person ________________________________________________________________ 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
