[IxDA Discuss] How to hire a good IxD (RE: Eye tracking, how valuable is it?)

[Michael Micheletti]

Wow, great insight, thank you. 

At my previous company, we used to run a little test for UI designer
candidates during an interview. We'd trot out an example screen from an
existing working system - a screen that was designed by programmers in a
rush. It contained bad examples of just about everything you can
imagine. We'd give our candidate a printout of the screen and introduce
it as "something that we thought could perhaps be improved upon, would
they please give us some suggestions?" Responses ranged from knockout
clinics on application redesign to "hey it looks pretty good" (no hire).
But this gave us an opportunity to interact with the candidate in a
design task that only took 15 minutes. Plus it was fun.

One last thought on the resume breakdown below - I probably wouldn't
make your cut. You'd be trying to decide whether to put me in the visual
or web designer out piles. I suspect there are a fair number of other
IxD practitioners out there who shade towards one domain boundary or
another, either in history or skill set, who got to this part of your
message and said "ouch".

Michael Micheletti
Seattle, WA

-----Original Message-----
From: discuss-bounces at lists.interactiondesigners.com
[mailto:discuss-bounces at lists.interactiondesigners.com] On Behalf Of
David (Heller) Malouf
Sent: Friday, July 07, 2006 9:00 AM
To: discuss at interactiondesigners.com
Subject: [IxDA Discuss] How to hire a good IxD (RE: Eye tracking,how
valuable is it?)

[Please voluntarily trim replies to include only relevant quoted
material.]


> Care to outline exactly how one goes about hiring a *good* UI 
> designer? ;-)

...

Here's the tough part. Out of an application pool that make it through
the door, here is what I think the statistics are in my experience for
finding a GOOD designer:

100 resumes
	80%-90% don't make cut - stereotypes on purpose (asbestos is on,
so flame away)
		visual designer - too aesthetic
		usability expert - don't know how to speak in terms of
design, or create
		HCI person - too cognitive, and don't understand
aesthetics
		Information architect - don't understand how to interact
over time
		multimedia designer - great for games and animation, but
not for software
		web designer - developer in designer's clothing

	20-10% get to interview
		19-9% not good
			IA in designer's clothing
			Never learned how to present designs
				They can talk a good talk, but can't
really walk the walk
	1% get the job
		get it! 1 out of 100 resumes really are a GOOD IxD.
Harsh but true.

So, it is indeed REALLY hard to find a good IxD, so maybe it is so hard
that you might as well just get that eye-tracking done. ;)

-- dave


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