ASIS&T;
Since 1937, ASIS&T; has been the society for information professionals leading the search for new and better theories, techniques, and technologies to improve access to information.
What I Learned in 17 Years at Interactive Agencies
My UX career started on June 5, 1995, at a user interface design startup. Seventeen years later, I am still a practitioner, and I have learned a lot. Please allow me to share some of what I learned, with the aim of educating and entertaining the Euro IA audience.
I have worked as a freelancer and for a 500-man agency, for profit and non-profit clients, small and large, fresh and seasoned, successful and failing. My job-titles ranged from UI Designer to Design Director, from Information Architect to Managing Partner, from Project Manager to Design Lead and I have done the same things in all of these roles. I have seen the same ways of working succeed and fail in different organizations; I have seen unique solutions that deserve to be shared.
I want to I share and illustrate some of my lessons-learned (like "meetings are work too", "sales sells; you scale or suffer", "you don't need a process (until you need one)", and "titles ARE important") to answer questions about life at an interactive agency. These will range from the personal ("Q: Did you ever have a break-down? A: Yes, I had two burnouts") to the practical ("Q: My boss is incompetent, what do I do? A: Make him shine; the truth will come out") to the silly ("Q: How much do you earn? A: More than I get"), etc. I want the audience to learn about working in this field, and I want them to learn faster by sharing stories.
Peter Boersma
Peter Boersma is Interaction Design Director and Process Design Consultant. He has 17 years of experience with designing for complex, interactive, digital systems. He can perform user research and usability evaluations, will identify business opportunities based on stakeholder interviews and competitive research, develops appropriate high-level concepts, and documents the resulting designs for user interfaces. At most of his former employers, he made himself responsible for documenting the design processes, optimizing and promoting them, both inside and outside the organization. Peter has given presentations and taught workshops at many national and international User Experience conferences, some of which he helped organize. Since 2001, he is the host of the Amsterdam UX Cocktail Hours.
