When I say “skills”, what does that mean to you? Electronics? Programming? Woodwork? Typing? Well, what about: presentation? Research Methodologies? Sketching? Brainstorming?
In my experience most people are obsessed with skills or the limited number of things they consider to be skills. Usually these things are practical, hardware or software related and are always ‘taught’ to you by someone else. That’s fine but you must realize that your skills are more than that. They are the things you’ve developed over your career, creative things, things that sometimes seem intangible. Things like: listening, summarising, asking questions, mapping ideas, as well as the ones I mentioned above.
Don’t sell yourself short. Don’t say “Oh I don’t have any skills” when what you mean is you’ve not yet been trained in some particular skills you are interested in learning. When I used to interview people to come onto a masters course and they said the reason they wanted to come was to learn skills or improve skills the alarm bells started to ring? Mainly because those skills were always, without exception, programming and electronics. No one ever wanted to learn new user research methodologies, or learn more about working in groups. Skills were always seen as the practical hands on variety. Why did these people not say: “I want to work with others, develop my ideas and explore interaction design”. That’s what I wanted to hear.
I always thought, “Why come on a two years masters course to learn skills you could learn in an evening class?”. Don’t get me wrong. I think it’s good to have knowledge of many practical areas. But take them with a pinch of salt, they are not the be all and end all. When you are working in industry will you have to do all the electronics and programming on the new product yourself? Maybe…but more likely you’ll be working in a team with engineers, ethnographers, product designers, graphic designers etc.
Rory Hamilton 2005
Skills can be learnt to different levels. I like people to have tried electronics and programming and be able to talk to someone else about them in a sensible way. So when you’re in the real world you can talk to those engineers and explain what you need them to help do on the new prototype. Having this level of knowledge means that people will respect you and won't dismiss your ideas or walk all over you. Knowing what's possible and encouraging other to push those boundaries makes you a great team member and a great designer.
You don't have to be a
"One Man Band".
If you fall in love with a certain area, such as electronics and want to use it more in your future career then go for it but don’t feel you have to be good at everything. In interaction design and increasingly in other design fields we have to work in teams to get things done and often this is a really rewarding experience.
