Drewidia

One of the more nagging, frequent questions I’ve been receiving over the past six months in combination with “why did you quit your job” and “why are you doing this weird little startup sites” is “why are you going back to school for such a weird degree?”

I’m going to take a page from minimalist information display and get right to the gold on this one, bullet point-style.

1) Change of Career

Biz Tech Consulting-come-Usability Expert

I love watching a virgin user experience a product/service for the first time. I love watching people get passionate about a product, either negatively or positively. I love having an initial design thrown on it’s head by an unsuspecting enlightenment, and the process of revising that, at first, so-carefully-crafted design. And I want to do all of this professionally.

The problem is, I can’t get there from a career in management consulting. And believe me, I’ve tried. Most companies aren’t willing to take a chance on a wanna-be interaction designer whose only worked on big fat business-technology projects for the past three years. In fact, I have yet to find a company that will. They want experience, firstly, and failing that, a background in HCI.

Ergo, Informatics degree.

2) My Projects, My Goals

My Professional Goals > Some Company’s Goal’s

I have said before that Deloitte Consulting is a fantastic firm to work for if you’re going down a management path. For those of us who want to build a better user experience, design interactions, or otherwise practice HCI, it really isn’t the place to be. I could have joined another firm or made a slightly lateral move within Deloitte, but this likely would not have been significant. Deloitte, plain and simple, just isn’t known for design. It’s not anywhere near their bread and butter and that’s okay.

A graduate education will (hopefully) give me space to learn and ultimately put to practice Usability/Interaction Design/User-Centric concepts in projects I want to engage myself (see Craigsmonitor and Payowe ). I simply don’t know enough about interaction design or user experience right now and I need to learn.

The best way to learn is by not only doing, but doing it right. Learning and applying concepts directly is the path to least resistance in this regard. Organizations of all sizes have their own goals, and it is unlikely that they will directly correspond with interest in HCI.

Conclusion

I’m not expecting a massively increased salary post-grad. I’m not expecting to be working a dream job following school doing exactly what I want to do with design and usability 11 hours/day.

What I’m interested in is shifting my career-focus from a place I don’t necessarily care for to a field I am incredibly passionate about, and I’d like a few years to better harness those skills.