The Skills We Need as HCI'ers

When I got full-time into HCI, it wasn't with the intention of writing code or picking site colors. I like the psychology and IA stuff a lot better, and even the worst CS students are far superior programmers compared to me. I'm attracted more to the social aspects of technology usage. Few of my HCI brethren seem to come from the web design end of the business. There are programmers, sure, but they tend to be more hard-core, writing software rather than web scripts. Yet, job descriptions for usability people are often hybrids of usability and true web design. Companies don't seem to care if we can do card sorts or usability tests. They want us to program.

Flash is a popular requirement, but there are even more likely items on the corporate wish list. .Net is a favorite, ASP.net , VB.net, or C#. Java has made good inroads, too. Javascript, of course. HTML is a given, but XML is coming up fast. It's tough to know if a company is looking for an HCI pro who can program a little, or a programmer who can recognize horrible usability when he sees it.

I have to admit that at one point between gigs I began looking again at ASP.net, on the advice of Ed Sullivan, a feisty and knowledgeable guy from IUPUI who assured me that an ASP.net programmer would always have a job. It still didn't trip my trigger, but the fact that I was diverting my attention in a direction I never wanted to go is indicative of the state of HCI at the moment. Are we non-programmer HCI'ers at a disadvantage, compared with the ASP.net crowd and New Media grads? Maybe. Depends on where you are in the country, maybe. But around here, I think for sure we're having more trouble justifying our existence.