I’ve had it up *to here* with rejection when it comes to design jobs. I hit that point this morning when I got an email from a company I did a second interview for UX last week that declined me to “move on with other candidates”. Thanks for taking my ideas for free. I’m here all week. The 8 o’clock show is different than the 5 o’clock show.
Admittedly, I don’t have a portfolio of IxD/UX/VD because no one will give me a shot. I mention all three practices of design because as different as they are, they are related disciplines and I can do all three—if someone would let me. What work I have garnered in those fields hasn’t seen the light of day—not because the design wasn’t solid, they were startups that just didn’t make it. Like a sitcom pilot, I’m destined for rejection until some test audience actually likes me.
I have a BFA in Design + Technology from SFAI, which is no slouch of a school. The major really should have been called Interaction Design, because that’s what is was. Now CCA is offering an Interaction Design BFA, and they’re teaching the same text I read like a bible four years ago—Designing Interactions and now Designing Media (aka The Taos of Bill Moggridge). I spent over $130,000 in tuition alone (and years working at a nightclub to pay for it) to prove that I can do these pratices, on top of over 15 years of being immersed in technology and my whole life being facsinated by design in general. I mention this because I’ve come across people with jobs in these fields that have degrees in completely different practices—or no degree at all—that just happened to be at the right place at the right time to prove that yes, they can do IxD/UX. Should I have skipped school and bullshitted my way through and just taken spec jobs to build this portfolio that everyone keeps asking for? I could really use that $130k for other things. I’m scared to death to go to grad school because I’m not getting a job now…would I really be getting a job then?
I also spent three months as an intern for the Lean User Experience MASTER herself. Three months taking in everything there is to know about the Agile Method and Lean Startup concepts while working with some really great companies.
[From my pedestal] I live in the right city. I know the right people. Do I intimidate? Am I too pretty? Do I speak my mind too much? Not enough? Am I not attending enough social gatherings? How else do I prove that besides being a photographer that I am a thinker, a realist, a user and not a program? Don’t get me wrong, I love my photography business, but unless I whore myself out into genre photography I will continue to have gaps in my schedule. I just can’t be *that* photographer. Those gaps are usually filled by post-work and pre-production that I handle myself, but occasionally I have gaps where I am not working and it drives me crazy. The downtime fills me with guilt that I’m not creating something, anything. To top it off, the inability to budget effectively is a major point of frustration. The inability to know that I can’t make X payment or Y payment in three months if I buy Z now because I have A and B jobs coming up but I really need a constant C.
What’s really getting me lately is the void left by moving farther and farther away from design. I’m not just a girl with a camera. I live and breathe technology (ffs, “tecgirl”, hello?) and understand interactions and experiences and good visual design.
So I ask you, designers…how did you get your start? I’m hitting a wall and am running out of theories as to what I am doing wrong.
