

Ask HN: Tips on finding great interaction designers? - thomaspun

I'm sure everyone you know is hiring designers. Any tips of 'discovering' or 'attracting' great interaction designers. We aren't just looking for people who put out great pixels (it's a minimum requirement) but designers who get the Apple way. Dribbble? Forrst?<p>If you are a designer or know someone who may be interested in disrupting the mobile video entertainment (same way Flipboard did to print), please shoot us an email to say hi and I'll tell you more about the exciting things we are working on!<p>Thx! thomas @ nowbox.com
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jtothapreston
If you know how to recognize good interaction and visual design, go with your
gut instincts. Also the biggest factor in hiring anyone is whether or not you
can see working with them.

I've found some of my best interaction designers in juniors, fresh out of
college, with crappy portfolios, but where I could see potential in them, and
them wanting to learn.

I've also found senior interaction designers, with portfolio's to die for,
crazy good experience, and have found them to be not willing to take feedback
or with collaboratively with other designers and developers.

You never can tell. My experience has been that it's better to find someone
stronger on visual design, information design, and aesthetics and that the
Human Factors and usability stuff can be mostly taught quickly. It's
impossible to do it the other way around.

I've been hiring and training interaction designers for over 6 years and have
a UX agency, so I've become pretty adept at going with my gut feeling and
mentoring young interaction designers.

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martinkallstrom
Step one is to learn the lingo. A great interaction designer will not
necessarily have any graphic design skills, as that is the graphic designers
job. It sounds like you are looking for someone with skills encompassing both
disciplines, which you should be very clear about. Just as engineers sneer at
recruiters messing up technical terms, great designers have enough options to
not apply to positions where the recruiter shows little understanding of the
area. It doesn't instill confidence that you will be able to give proper merit
to their skill set and experience.

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strato
I would add to this that great designers will expect to have input at the
product level. It's hard to simplify a product that's not properly thought
through.

~~~
thomaspun
Of course the designers (in fact everyone on the team) would contribute
greatly to the product design. However, we do believe one person needs to
drive the vision but everyone on the team will have a say within the
constraint.

We also explain all the motives of doing something, i.e., how to make it easy
for users to find the next channel to watch... v.s. make these channels look
pretty.

