Some of you may know me, some may not. That is mostly irrelevant. This is an experiment in self-accountability, progress tracking, and passion building. But what passion am I building, what progress am I tracking, for what do I need to hold myself accountable? Well, this is the first in a series of… articles? blogs? … a series of whatevers that I will be writing, chronicling my dive into the realm of User Experience. Specifically, I’m looking at User Experience Research with maybe a little Design to go with it.
Huh?
Okay, let me backtrack a little. For those of you who don’t know me (or don’t know me very well), a little background. My name is Ian. I’m (nearly) 30 years old. Married. Cat. Dog. Facial hair. A couple of years ago, I received my Master’s in Philosophy with the intention of getting a PhD and pursuing a nice, quiet little academic career. But after some thought, and a lack of good offers from reputable PhD programs, I decided against spending 7 years getting a degree that wasn’t going to guarantee me a job.
So what was I going to do? At the behest of some buds, I started studying web development. Seemed like a fairly straight forward career path and one that was in demand. But after a while I became increasingly bored with it. I found coding tedious and desired something with more human connection. That’s when a friend of mine suggested I look into UX. Alright. A couple of wikipedia articles and blog posts later, and I was definitely intrigued. However, I wasn’t able to really dedicate myself to the study of it due to a variety of reasons.
Jump forward to, well, last night and I’m finally at a point where I can really start focusing in on this fascinating subject. To that end, I decided to start a blog about my studies; to track my progress, express my thoughts, and (maybe, hopefully) help others in my position. This blog will consist of various notes, responses to the books and articles I read, and insights I may garner along the way. I’ll keep you up to date on the various sources I’m consuming and any projects I tackle. So, there it is and here I go.