Probably the least exciting part, but most crucial part of any field is the salaries that people get doing it. Higher salaries means that more people are interested and that people who practice are most likely valued more. I think it’s an interesting metric to gauge design and specifically interaction design’s place in our culture, especially considering that some form of what we do qualifies as one of the best careers of 2008.

As the end of the master’s program approaches, it’s more relevant than ever for all of us second year students. That being said, I came across two documents, one from Carnegie Mellon and one from the Institute of Design in Chicago that polled some graduates:

IIT puts the median at $80-$90k, CMU gives a conservative $66k, and US News has some pretty high numbers, except for Pittsburgh. Of course, these should all be taken cautiously, considering the number of people who responded, the various levels of experience that people might have, and what the job actually is.

Also, pulled these from the IxDA discussion list:
AIGA Design Salaries Website
AIGA Survey of Design Salaries 2007
Information Architecture Institute Salary Survey 2006
Usability Professionals’ Assocation Salary Survey 2005
Jakob Nielson’s Salary Trends for Usability Professionals 2006
Peak Usability Salary Survey 2002, 2004

The types of work and titles are questionable… but if anyone has any other sources, I’d like to hear about em.

I wanted to get a post in before the year ended, but it looks like I’ll have to settle for the first day of the new year. Instead of giving a large summary of things, I’m just going to link to some recent links that I have found interesting and might say something about the future.

Technology
Regardless of people’s view of technology in the world, designers should always have a good sense of what is happening and what will happen with the potential materials of their products. It gives us more resources to solve problems, but also more ways to screw up. BBC has a pair of lists one that is looks back at technology with impact, and one that looks forward at technologies on the rise. It’ll be interesting to see whatever happens with WIMAX, especially with regards to services that aren’t just about getting entertainment to people at higher bandwidths and with higher resolution.

Ideas and People
To do anything worthwhile with the technology, not only is there a need for people to design successful products, but there is also a need for someone to monetize it and distribute it to others.

From the always-interesting Springwise, they posted the top ten telecom and mobile business ideas of 2007 . With all the mobile stuff I’ve been involved with, it’s a nice look at some ideas people have had and developed into businesses of some sort.

There’s also a great interview with Trent Reznor by Wired in either text or audio. Most of it is him describing the ARG (Alternative Reality Game) that he developed with 42 entertainment for the release of his previous album. I think what’s great about it is not only his realization that he needs to keep up with new generations of listeners, but the fact that he understands what is going and is passionate about doing things right for his audience. I see parallels with what interaction or experience designers do, in that the value is no longer only in the traditional product (in this case the music tracks), but the entire experience surrounding it. I think if anyone wants to be ahead of the game, they either have to distribute media in ways that are faster and more convenient than the illegal channels or they have to approach their product with the assumption that the media is free and they need to build something else related to it that will bring in profits.

On the opposite ends of creation for profit is an audio interview with Tony Dunne and Fiona Raby by Core77, which many people probably came across through the experientia blog. It’s great hearing them talk about what they do, and it makes me want to grab their books.

Usability/User Experience Specialist
Despite the awkward title and contradictory descriptions, its probably a good thing that the type of work we do is on the list of Best Careers of 2008 (hopefully much longer too, eh?). The link comes from the IxDA discussion list, and even just browsing I could tell it created quite a stir, especially with the nearly six-figure salary they tacked on. Although there references are all about HCI and Human Factors, I think the day in the life description sounds a bit more like design.

Knowing
A final link, again to BBC, is a nice little list about 100 things we didn’t know last year. Reminds me that even with the catastrophes that mark time, there is also progress in our generation of knowledge as a society, even if its only random tidbits of info.

Today I stopped by Jodi’s Advanced Interaction glass to hear John Beck talk about his experiences working in the real world. John graduated from here 7 years ago from the interaction design program and was one of Jodi’s first advisees. He worked at BodyMedia after graduating and eventually founded Gist Design a small design consultancy here in Pittsburgh. Earlier this semester Dick Buchanan suggested taking a look at his thesis paper to get a good idea of the structure of our papers, so it was nice to be able to hear his thoughts in person.

John talked about his design philosophies and described the basis for the work he does. He approaches design as a way to solve complex business problems in a strategic and tactical manner. He talked a lot about the work he did with BodyMedia and how it is about behavior change for people, but that you can’t force people to change, but it is more of a change of the awareness of their behavior by having access to explicit information about their habits over time. It sounds like there is the ability to use a suite of devices along with a web service to get information into a proper way to show others, including your doctor.

Data
An interesting point he brought up related to BodyMedia devices is the contrast between data that is collected by the devices and those that are entered into the system. There are some things, such as food intake, that needs to be entered manually and is presented alongside data that from the devices, making it somewhat problematic if people aren’t as honest as they could be.

John also talked about individual differences in motivation. I found this really interesting, since my thesis project is already dealing with motivational issues.

• Numbers themselves can be motivation for some people, such as seeing the number of calories spent each day.
• Coaching and branding might also motivate people, if they  have some overarching cohesive system that is telling them what they should do next.
• The social aspect of sharing also helps motivate people, as they share the data showing the energy expenditures over a week with other people using the same system. People can also challenge each other and cooperate like when people go jogging or work out together.
• There is also the social networking aspect where people can meet and find others who are doing similar activites and have similar goals and values
• Feedback at the right moment is also important. Giving someone access to their data at the exact moment when they are deciding whether to stay indoors or go outside is more useful than after they have committed to staying home and doing something else.

Design Studios VS Design Consultancies
A lot of the conversation revolved around the idea of different possibilities in places to work, which was good for me as I make my decision of what I want to do afterwards.

Studio: You’re going to make the actual solution. You hire people to do the design of different parts, build it, and also support it.

Consultancy: More focused on research and planning. You need to be able to facilitate discussions with client teams. The interdisciplinary nature of CMU is good for this. You become the voice of design and speak for the end user.

This turned the discussion into what they end up delivering to clients at the end. Those being: Research reports, plans, scenarios, early conceptual prototypes, wireframes, or even flash prototypes. So there is quite a variety, as expected

Important Skills 
Talking about the deliverables naturally transitioned to the creation of them and skills needed to be a part of a successful design team. A lot of it might be obvious, but it was nice to hear it again.

• Ability to communicate clearly, especially to clients
• Ability to listen - hear what people are saying, understand it, and re-frame the discussion in the interest of the end user.
• Ability to find ways that users already deal with an issue (ex, paper journaling their wight loss)
• A passion for questioning and figuring out why people do the things that they do.
• Reiteration of importance of communication (it’s hard to teach and often missing)
  • Speaking clearly
  • Knowing social conventions of a group (esp. clients), when to talk, when to let them talk
  • Not just verbal, but the idea of the consultance’s stance. People are paying you for knowledge and leadership through a problem. You should clearly show your value and be able to stand your ground. People often think that you are just billing them without giving them something useful.
  • Etiquette when sending emails, naming files, logical organization of meterials. Everything is “part of the argument” and is a reflection of your relationship with the client.
  • Consciousness with your deliverables… even the breaking down of cost-benefit analysis.

He talked about how not only does this help them get new clients by being “buttoned up” but more importantly it helps them retain clients. 80% of the clients they work with are ones they started working with in their first year as a company.

To wrap up he talked a little bit about how he decided to work with BodyMedia and why he ended up starting his own company. Overall it was really worth hearing and to get some more real-world grounding. Sometime I feel like we are in a bit of a fantasy land while in school and forget about day to day logistical issues that we don’t have to deal with here. Gist definitely sounds like an interesting place and I like to hear about people who are working in the design world doing stuff that they enjoy that is positive and beneficial rather than designing simply to get more sales.

While digging through some literature and immersing myself in my thesis project topic, I started questioning why I am approaching this particular topic, and more generally, what are most people’s motivations for designing. I was remembering back to the one the first days of Dick Buchanan’s seminar course and how we went around the large table asking us “why are you here?” What is the deep motivation for even choosing to spend time learning about and practicing design. Is it to make the world a better place? Browsing through some of these books at the library, it seems like that’s what a lot of people want to do. From politics to urban planning to philosophy, people are pushing themselves in an area for some reason or another.

These reasons are the principles that guide the types of design projects and the decisions we make within them. Am I here because I want to make “cool stuff” or is it because there are better job prospects with a master’s degree or is it because I truly want to make the world a better place. I’m aiming towards the last one and I’m trying my best, but it’s not always easy.

This brings me to the question of when not to design. If we are truly trying to make the world a better place, there might be times that we tackle a project that ends up a dead end. Maybe there is nothing to invent and people will go about their natural way of doing things and there is nothing you can do to change it. A bit cynical perhaps and it’s probably not the best attitude have. It might come down to the initial approach to the design problem itself. There’s tons of writing and discussion about how problem framing is critical, which might be one way the dead-ends are avoided.

But I wonder, especially when the starting point is a new technology or ability, how many times have there been situations where designers should have just admitted that there is nothing they can do and move on. Or is there always something that can be done, even if it is small. Is there a mobile application hiding in every human issue? A service that people can always attach to and use on a regular basis? With pressure from clients and even within academia to produce results, it’s probably rare. If there is a paper on a project like that, I’d love to read it.

In tackling the topic of my thesis paper, this question in its various forms has been eating at me for a while. And while there are common themes and concepts that people bring up when describing it, I’m not so sure that we will ever end up experiencing it in the way people talk about it. I don’t think it’s a matter of suddenly deploying a large network that now enables everything to be interactive and linked up. It seems to me that ubicomp is more accurately an evolutionary process in which we figure out how new technology fits into our current situations. Perhaps it’s simply becoming the reference to technology that addresses our everyday needs and not the development of specialized tools and products.

My question is then not what is it, but why is it? I feel like interaction design as we learn it at school is the most appropriate way to approach this topic. Why do we feel the need to talk about ubicomp as something distinct? Essentially interaction designers are working on these small pieces of information technology (and yes, products in general) that are addressing people’s needs regardless of the overarching organization of coherent ubiquitous system. This is interesting because the discussion is no longer about the speculations and possibilities and is more about a bottom-up approach to designing this future.

So who is designing the now and future of computing anyway? Is it the humanistic designers who empathize with people’s needs? Is it large corporations who have enough money to deploy infrastructure only when it’s convenient for them? Or is it DIY hackers who aggressively subvert these companies, organize, and create ad-hoc networks of their own?  Maybe it’s everyone. The healthy(hopefully) interplay between all these different might have the potential to scrap together new ways that we will use technology as a resource.

As I’m investigating, I came across a great post that references an old paper that questions ubicomp. Perfect timing.