How to Become a "User Experience Designer"
(Excerpts)
About once a week, I get an email from someone who is interested in becoming a user experience professional. They ask me a series of questions about how one would do this. The questions and areas of focus for these emails vary dramatically, depending on the interests of the individual asking. I thought it would be a good idea to write a post on some of the more common information about how to begin a career in user experience and how to become a user experience professional.
I have found three core areas of advice that I tend to dispense when it comes to someone who is starting out and wanting to know more about user experience. These three areas contain a lot of information. I could write a book on each one, but for the sake of brevity, I am going to keep my advice here limited to the high-level concepts. I am also going to limit this advice to being more web-centric rather than trying to cover all of the platforms and perspectives that user experience covers.
