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Breaking into Information Design

Wednesday, September 5th, 2007 at 7:58 AM Category: Business, Meryl's Notes Blog, Tech No comments

Someone interested in breaking into information design contacted me to ask about the field, whether a degree or certificate would help, and the tools and skills used. It’s a very broad question as information design covers everything including print. But I answered the question from the online perspective and thought others may benefit from this information.

This field include information design, user experience, web design, publication design, graphic design, information architecture, etc. Looking at the Web sites and locating a nearby chapter in the following organizations makes a good starting point:

STC (Society for Technical Communication) — www.stc.org
UPA (The Usability Professionals’ Association) — www.upassoc.org
SIGCHI — www.sigchi.org
ASIS&T (American Society for Information Science and Technology) — www.asis.org/SIG/ia.html
IA Institute (The Information Architecture Institute) — iainstitute.org

STC, for example, has different SIGs (special interest groups) that could also provide valuable information. But of course, you want to narrow down your interests before joining SIGs or else too much information will come your way.

The following sites provide conference proceedings:

What would you recommend to someone interested in the field? What do people need to break in the field? How valuable (or not) is a degree or certification? What area should the degree or certificate be in?

Thanks to Elisa Miller for her input into the response.