[IxDA Discuss] Career paths & organizational structures for IxDs

[Elizabeth Bacon]

Hi folks,

I need this group's expertise for an investigation into career paths for
Interaction Designers. I do IxD & UX work with the title of "Human Factors
Design Engineer" at a medical device company.* I am charged with creating a
blueprint for our department to use as we grow the group and promote senior
staff. Some of the questions I need to address are:

- What are the possible career paths for IxDs?
- What sort of strategic value are IxDs expected to offer once they possess
a certain level of experience?
- What sort of organizational & departmental structures best support IxDs
advancing within a corporate environment?

Anything you can share or contribute would be very welcome! Does anybody
have a "Chief Design Officer" example yet?? I'd especially love to receive
org charts & information from established companies like Apple, Yahoo!, IBM,
Google, eBay, SAP, etc. since your companies lead the industry in terms of
hiring & establishing expectations for our profession. (I can leave
corporate attributions or remove them if desired, just let me know....)

Collecting information about this question would benefit the entire IxDA
community, and I intend to contribute my general findings to the Resource
Library if all goes well. I'd like to create something analogous to Challis
Hodge's great model of UX career paths (see
<http://www.challishodge.com/models_ux_careerpath.html>) but with an eye
more towards practitioners working on complex software & systems beyond the
web domain.

Thanks very much for any help you can provide!!

Cheers,
Liz


* Each member of our group handles activities ranging from ethnographic
research, product definition, interaction design, user interface design,
information architecture, ergonomics, and usability testing, through ongoing
usability benchmarking, requirements review and software development
support.