I went to college in the early nineties for art & design, started out by working as a print designer, and launched an independent magazine in 1992.
That led me to the web in '95, where I learned HTML by working right on the server, using vi as my text editor. We had a tiny shop, so everyone did everything. Graphic design, front end coding, content - the only thing I couldn't do was back-end stuff.
Eventually we were bought by Razorfish, and they decided some people would be called "information architects," so in 1997 I took the title of IA, and went from there.
I've studied with various mentors, but my best education has come from Nielsen Norman Group's usability weeks, and constantly pestering people in emails, on message boards, listservs, conferences, you name it. The UX community is pretty tight-knit, and people really help each other out.
In the years that I've done IA and UX, I've worked for IBM, Disney, and several large agencies. I started as a usability freak, but have expanded my horizons to realize that there's a whole spectrum of things that are important to a good experience.
I'm now executive director for a large NY agency with offices worldwide, and I have a very diverse group of UX people in the different offices.
One thing I look for in a UX practitioner is a diversity of experience and background. Someone who studied IA in college and has only been on one path often has trouble empathizing with real world users.
I have hired people with degrees in library sciences, human computer interaction, design, computer science, psychology, human factors, even theater. It's all about how a person solves problems to me, not the degree they pursued.
I'd encourage your friend to spend more time on listservs like IXDA or SIGIA, going to conferences like Adaptive Path's UX Week and N/Ng's usability week, and making that his new education. It's incredibly rewarding.
That led me to the web in '95, where I learned HTML by working right on the server, using vi as my text editor. We had a tiny shop, so everyone did everything. Graphic design, front end coding, content - the only thing I couldn't do was back-end stuff.
Eventually we were bought by Razorfish, and they decided some people would be called "information architects," so in 1997 I took the title of IA, and went from there.
I've studied with various mentors, but my best education has come from Nielsen Norman Group's usability weeks, and constantly pestering people in emails, on message boards, listservs, conferences, you name it. The UX community is pretty tight-knit, and people really help each other out.
In the years that I've done IA and UX, I've worked for IBM, Disney, and several large agencies. I started as a usability freak, but have expanded my horizons to realize that there's a whole spectrum of things that are important to a good experience.
The best wakeup calls I had were when Don Norman published "Emotional Design," and when Peter Morville made his UX honeycomb ( http://semanticstudios.com/publications/semantics/000029.php)
I'm now executive director for a large NY agency with offices worldwide, and I have a very diverse group of UX people in the different offices.
One thing I look for in a UX practitioner is a diversity of experience and background. Someone who studied IA in college and has only been on one path often has trouble empathizing with real world users.
I have hired people with degrees in library sciences, human computer interaction, design, computer science, psychology, human factors, even theater. It's all about how a person solves problems to me, not the degree they pursued.
I'd encourage your friend to spend more time on listservs like IXDA or SIGIA, going to conferences like Adaptive Path's UX Week and N/Ng's usability week, and making that his new education. It's incredibly rewarding.