Career: Deep vs Broad Experience

Phil,
Good question. And why is "experienced" in quotes... sort of like "not that
there's anything wrong with that"? :)
As someone who's gotten paychecks from lots of employers I feel especially
qualified on this:

If we word and read our rants very precisely, I hope there would be wide
agreement that broad experience undeniably makes the better designer. But
you didn't ask that, did you?

"Career advancement" won't come from employers (unless Dave hires you at
whoever it was that Motorola bought). It will come from you going both broad
and deep and being forceful and strategic at business.

"Job security" has no source of which to inquire because it is as quaint as
a steam locomotive. Do not read into this a negative connotation. The best
work nowadays is often at volatile sites.

The correct combination of terms, that I will be coaching my kids for, would
now be "career security."

The America job market is optimized for short-term returns. This means most
hiring situations are fixated on "deep." If you are in an "employers'
market" you are most likely to get a job by going deep on whatever is
advertised. (Advertisements show employers at their worst, when they have
done no planning. Expect to go to a place that has problems because they
haven't mastered their environment and culture enough to plan.) If, on the
other hand, you are in an "employees' market" put as much energy as you can
into going broad.

www.jackbellis.com

----- Original Message -----
From: "Phil Chung" <gradlife79 at yahoo.com>
To: <discuss at ixda.org>
Sent: Monday, March 05, 2007 12:59 AM
Subject: [IxDA Discuss] Career: Deep vs Broad Experience

> A question for the more "experienced" folks on the list:
>
> In terms of career advancement and job security, is it better for an
interaction designer to develop deep or broad experience, in terms of
product domains? For example, would you recommend spending twenty years
working on one type of product (e.g., websites) or twenty years spread
across mobile, games, web, software, voice, hardware, etc.?
>
> Obviously, this depends largely on what your personal interests are,
career goals, etc., but I am just curious what insights experience in this
field (e.g., surviving the dot com bubble) has given to those who are
further along in their careers than I am.
>
> Thanks,
> Phil
>
>
>
>
>
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I would take this a step further. A single resume is not enough. You need an introductory resume with a quick list of youir top accomplishments. One to hand over durring an interview - often a timeline of recent positions showing career progress. And, likely a comprehensive multi-page resume with great detail (think vitæ).

Additionally - an online resume is different than the one you send - or the one you fax. Use your contextual design expereince and think about how each would be handed, read and reference in the specific context. There is not much more important a design project than this.

Also - make very sure you have a couple of good detail folks proof read everything multipe times. Good luck.

Mark

>And one secret I'll let out of the bag...anyone who told you to try and
>keep your resume short is doing you a disservice. Tell your story, and
>however long it is, well that's fine. As long as it's worth reading,
>I'll read it all. One page for every two years is a good rule of thumb,
>but your mileage may vary.

I would do it like this:

First priority ...
BE A DESIGNER. Any type of designer will do, but know your stuff about
design theory and process as broadly as possible. I find that many in
the UX world trying to transition from IA or Usability positions into
IxD positions severely lack this in their work.

Second priority ...
Know the palettes/canvases you are asked to design for.
In the case of IxD ... understand software generally, and if relevant
web or devices

Without these first two things, you really aren't worth a heck of a lot to me.

Third priority ...
Design Research ... I mean how can you do the 1st two if you don't
know anything about who or why you are designing. This includes
standard UCD methods but also business methods

Extra stuff that can effect your ability to be hired depending on the
type of place:
1. vertical market experience - pharma, financial, retail especially
have strong affinity towards people who have worked in those
environments before. Same with Advertising, publishing and media.

2. Type of organization: innie or outtie. Do you actually produce
stuff? The environments are very different in terms of communication
styles, priority development and often career path.

> It will come from you going both broad
> and deep and being forceful and strategic at business.

I agree that both depth and breadth makes for an appealing candidate,
but at the same time, most employers only hire you to do *one* thing
really well. Because of this, I think over the span of your career,
it's most rewarding and interesting to go deep on a particular aspect
of the profession only for a while (say, withing one position in one
company), then move to another and another.

When you start getting comfortable, it's time to reinvent yourself. :)

-r-

On Mar 4, 2007, at 9:59 PM, Phil Chung wrote:
> A question for the more "experienced" folks on the list:
>
> In terms of career advancement and job security, is it better for
> an interaction designer to develop deep or broad experience, in
> terms of product domains?

The conventional wisdom up here in the Seattle area is that you
should have a more-or-less "T-shaped" experience profile. Broad
experience for the top crossbar, plus real depth in one subset of
skills. Personally, I think this leaves out a whole host of potential
letterform-based experience graphs, and we're only talking about two
dimensions.

Nonetheless, the main trick is to show that you have the ability to
solve the problems your potential employer needs to have solved.
Broad experience in a business area (e.g., web, telecom, advertising,
etc.) shows you know the general problem space for that line of work
and that you can usefully communicate with anyone in that business.
Deeply geekish obsession in a subset of areas is going to show that
you're the only person insane enough to handle the problems specific
to that area.

> For example, would you recommend spending twenty years working on
> one type of product (e.g., websites) or twenty years spread across
> mobile, games, web, software, voice, hardware, etc.?

Never spend twenty years doing the Same Damned Thing -- ever. Only
trees do that, and the payscale for being a tree is lousy. I'm not
talking about type of product / type of business -- I'm talking about
focusing on one specialization around one set of skills.

Personally, I'm transitioning from a long career in software support,
documentation and testing into IA/UxD/IxD, but before that I was
pretty handy with a wrench and a soldering iron, and before that, my
academic work was in clinical psych, computer science and film
animation. From one perspective, it looks like a scattered mess --
but from my perspective, it looks like different views of analyzing,
explaining and solving design problems.

You need to learn enough about what's at the core of _your personal
work_ to be able to articulate how your personal work history is
related to your problem-solving abilities, and to the problems your
potential employers are trying to solve. Once you have a good grasp
on that, you'll know which jobs are right for you, and which are just
temporary.

- Will

Will Parker
wparker at ChannelingDesign.com

"The only people who value your specialist knowledge are the ones who
already have it." - William Tozier