[IxDA Discuss] How to hire a good IxD

[Mark Schraad]

Hey Michael,

You are right on. Some people are blessed with those sorts of  
conversational and situational insight, others not. I have seen  
brilliant managers and business owners fail simply because they could  
not read a room or sense another persons non verbal responses. Take  
for instance the sales person that diligently plows through the  
canned pitch while his prospect looks at his watch several times and  
gazes out the window. This may seem like an exaggeration, but I saw  
it happen in my own company.

Communications skills are incredibly important - both the output and  
inputs. You have to be able to listen and observe as well as present  
your ideas in a fashion that matches your audience/subjects.  
Ethnography and cultural anthropology classes can teach a lot about  
the observation skills. Drama classes and good sales training are  
sources of help with communication skills.

If you take a marketing example, asking a customer, "why did you buy  
the pink iPod mini?) First of all, I do not believe the customer  
really knows. This process is largely no a conscious process  
(Zaltman), but second, they will most likely lie to you. Apply this  
same line of reasoning to the interview process. In many cases HR is  
asking - or encouraging the prospect to either lie or spin a story.  
Good interviewing is mostly about asking fairly general questions and  
interpreting from those, the answers you seek. This is also, btw,  
really helpful in extracting tacit knowledge from sales people about  
products, marketing and delivery.

While all of this may seem somewhat removed from the designer's job,  
I believe that these are in fact crucial skills in the design  
process, that lie outside of most traditional design curriculum. The  
topic is the design job interview, and I stretched it to include some  
market research methodology, but is very applicable to the designer's  
role.

Mark




On Jul 7, 2006, at 10:33 PM, Michael Almond wrote:

> What about emotional intelligence? Or to use straight forward  
> language, the
> ability to understand and get along with people?