David, I made the jump to UX after many years of web front-end development work.
At the moment I am working for a very small agile shop so I am responsible for both the UX aspect of a project, and often get called on again to help with the markup/CSS/JS/CMS integration side of things. Personally, I like this because I've got something new going on every day. :) My previous UX job was full-time UX, and every once in a while I'd find myself getting slightly bored with analyzing process flows in Omnigraffle. I can absolutely say that a specialized degree is not necessary. However, you have to be willing to consume as much information and research as you possibly can. Read every book, study, whitepaper, blog, feed, etc. that you can get your hands on. This reading, combined with doing many rounds of user research (formal or informal), will get you very far. Having a mentor would be wonderful, but again, they're not necessary. I haven't had the luxury myself (after starting the "official" UX practice at my previous job and working with such a small team currently). That being said, I look to the great and timely advice of many on this list - Jared Spool, Will Evans, Dan Saffer, Dave Malouf, etc to help fill that gap. I'm still relatively new to the field (~2 years now) and still learning more every day. I've found my previous development experience to be invaluable though - knowing what's possible in a browser, how complicated it can end up being, code jargon, etc - has given me a good "in" with development teams. They give me a bit more respect instead of treating me as another sales-type guy, which I've heard can be a big problem for those in our field. Mark . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Posted from the new ixda.org http://www.ixda.org/discuss?post=39914 ________________________________________________________________ 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
