I don't think a Psych degree per se is essential, but a genuine interest in human psychology would be very useful.
One of my longtime friends is a clinical psychologist, and I gain important insights from her occasionally about all sorts of things, including interaction design. I also was briefly enaged to a true sociopath (narcissistic and borderline personality disorder), and the consequences of that experience led me into some fairly extensive explorations of what is "normal" and what is not in human behavior, and how some people succeed extremely well at manipulating others to meet their own needs. That had only a little to do with interaction design, perhaps, but a lot to do with understanding the vast diversity of human experience. I think sincere interest and experience will always be more important than a specific degree or training, but I think it's important for interaction designers to understand the hows and whys of critical thinking and scientific method. You would learn that as a psych major, but also as an engineer or geologist, and I learned it in high school with pretty strong reinforcement in both social science and natural science classes in college. I see a lot of sloppy, uncritical thinking applied everywhere these days. Critical thinking skills are crucially important to this work, along with (as I mentioned before) imagination and humility -- humility being needed to understand that somebody else's solution may very well be more desirable than your own. Jeff Seager > To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > Date: Thu, 20 Dec 2007 04:27:07 +0000 > Subject: Re: [IxDA Discuss] "Design" in Interaction Design? > > Oh my, apologies for the dreadful spelling and grammar in the last > post. The last para should read > > "Since most of the participants *do not have psychology background,* > I have to ask this question of the people you work with. How many of > your colleagues have studied psychology? *Do you consider psychology* > important or are psych degrees *too* general to be of use?" > > > . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . > Posted from the new ixda.org > http://www.ixda.org/discuss?post=23732 > > > ________________________________________________________________ > *Come to IxDA Interaction08 | Savannah* > February 8-10, 2008 in Savannah, GA, USA > Register today: http://interaction08.ixda.org/ > > ________________________________________________________________ > Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! > To post to this list ....... [EMAIL PROTECTED] > Unsubscribe ................ http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe > List Guidelines ............ http://www.ixda.org/guidelines > List Help .................. http://www.ixda.org/help _________________________________________________________________ Don't get caught with egg on your face. Play Chicktionary! http://club.live.com/chicktionary.aspx?icid=chick_wlhmtextlink1_dec ________________________________________________________________ *Come to IxDA Interaction08 | Savannah* February 8-10, 2008 in Savannah, GA, USA Register today: http://interaction08.ixda.org/ ________________________________________________________________ Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ....... [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe ................ http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines ............ http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .................. http://www.ixda.org/help
