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As a former "usability specialist" myself, I can speak to your question.
Yes, there are full-time positions in this line of work. Interface Design,
or Interaction Design are common job titles. These jobs might be in-house at
a large company that have frequent iterations of their product (Intuit or
MS, for example). There are also some firms that specialize in this service.
I was an Interaction Designer for about 6 months, and loved it. I worked for
a fairly well-known shop (in the ID world) called Cooper Interaction Design,
(www.cooper.com) which was founded by Alan Cooper, the "father" of Visual
Basic. Cooper has some big name clients, and does interesting work that I
enjoyed - in the main because it was more than just work, it was doing the
right thing for both Cooper's customers and end-users.
Unfortunately, this type of work is very sensitive to the ups and downs of
the market. As you can imagine, a company offering a service to dot-coms is
especially susceptive to anything that happens to them. In addition, as most
firms see ID work as "nice-to-have" as opposed to "need-to-have", positions
based on this type of work are among the first to go.
At Cooper, a number of the designers had degrees in cognitive psychology,
and a few had degrees in industrial design. Others, like myself, had liberal
arts degrees. I'm not aware of any colleges/universities that currently
offer degrees specifically aimed at ID/UI, but I'll ask some of my former
coworkers and see if I can come up with anything for you.
Dan
Dan Hall
Sr. Technical Writer
SchlumbergerSema GTSRN
All the opinions, errors, sarcasm, and wit (if any) expressed in this
e-mail are solely mine. SchlumbergerSema takes neither credit nor blame
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