Hi Allison, I'm guessing that the generalist path occurs most easily in a small shop, perhaps where the entire design department numbers 1 (like where I am). Opportunities present for graphic design, application design, coding, writing, prototyping, testing, giving presentations, and some research. I'm sure that designers who hang out a shingle and start their own consulting business also get a good deal of general business-related experience along the way.
I have done design work in a larger company, and was more narrowly focused there. It gave me an opportunity to gain depth in a couple of areas, but it took some effort on my part to incorporate other specialties of the design craft into my work. I seem more suited to a generalist role by nature. I've noticed that other successful senior members of our technical team here have generalist tendencies as well. For instance, our CTO can variously debug network traces, author patents, write interesting low-level software, test phone gateways, give good presentations, and do terrific tech support. So perhaps finding a supportive environment with generalist tendencies is helpful. Michael Micheletti On Mon, Nov 24, 2008 at 8:13 AM, allison <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > In really large companies, at some point you sort of make a decision > to either go the specialist route or the generalist route. Does this > phenomenon exist in the IxD career path? If so, what are the > generalist options? > > <snip/> ________________________________________________________________ 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
