[ID Discuss] Guidance for someone interested in your field

[Dan Saffer]

There's two ways to break into this field (that I know of anyway):

1) convince someone to pay you to do it
2) go to school and get a degree in it (after which you have to do #1)

(Somehow I got it wrong and did both...)

In either case, you'll need some sort of portfolio. So you might need 
to do some work for free at first, or just some side projects. Design 
an application. Do Christina Wodke's challenge to redesign Netflix:

http://www.eleganthack.com/archives/003928.html#003928

or take Cooper's test:

http://www.cooper.com/content/company/d_test.asp


You just need something to show that demonstrates how you think and 
approach design problems.

Any other tips on good portfolio building?


Dan


Dan Saffer
M.Des. Candidate, Interaction Design
Carnegie Mellon University
http://www.odannyboy.com