[IxDA Discuss] how to get into IxD

[Jeff Howard]

Hi Bunny,

This is a popular topic of discussion. A friend of mine wrote about  
it on his blog a while back and I wanted to point you to a particular  
comment that I found inspiring:

http://www.brightlycoloredfood.com/2005/02/04/one-list-to-rule-them- 
all/#comment-197

I'll excerpt it here:

. . .

> Chad! Did you learn nothing in your time here in Pittsburgh? He  
> wants to be an interaction designer and you gave him some articles  
> from Cooper and uiweb?
>
> Tsk. Tsk. Tsk.
>
> You tell him I said to take a long unstructured walk around his  
> city. Talk to strangers. Take pictures. Visit at least one museum.  
> Pretend like he’s from somewhere else for an hour. Stop in a park  
> to read Raymond Carver’s “What we talk about when we talk about  
> love.” (outloud would be rad, but I leave that up to him.) Go into  
> a music store, find two people who seem completely different from  
> him and buy whatever they are buying. And then end his travels at  
> your house where he’ll tell you the story of his day over a bottle  
> of Bombay Sapphire Gin. The story should last as long as the bottle.
>
> You listen to his story and then like Mr. Miyagi in “The Karate  
> Kid” tell him all the things he already knows interaction design  
> without even realizing it.
>
> And to answer the question before you ask - why Bombay Sapphire  
> Gin? Gin because it’s yummy. Bombay Sapphire because it’s  
> beautiful. We’re still designers after all. ;)
>

. . .

For context, Chad and Maggie are both graduates of the Interaction  
Design program at Carnegie Mellon University, as am I. Every school  
has its own character that evolves over time; that's the kind of  
perspective I think you might find there.

If you're looking for some different opinions, or just don't like  
gin, there are a lot of great threads here in the IxDA archives about  
Interaction Design education:

http://beta.ixda.org/topic_education.php

// jeff