Just found this site and it's my first question. Bit of a long story, but I think most of it is relevant considering the question. (If you are in a hurry, you can jump straight to the questions)
So. I'm an industrial design student, and it's my second year going at the moment. What has to be mentioned as well is that I'm not an average id student fresh from the high school, I'm 31 and I have studied business master's before, though didn't graduate from it because of some personal life stuff and the financial crisis happening at the same time.
After some difficulties in personal life and in the job market I decided I'd study industrial design, as it happens that during 2008 I was working in a long project in an industrial design agency, and I liked it hugely. However because of the financial crisis the project couldn't be continued anymore in 2009. What I was doing there was in essence ux design. Then, after the financial crisis I came to find out that in this new job market, with the business studies background it was impossible to get any kind of creative design jobs, at least in my own country, I then decided to go to study industrial design. Which was probably not the best choice, I guess I should have chosen Human-Computer Interaction. But this is a small country, and HCI isn't even taught but in two different places, I think.
Fast forward to this day. In this country it seems industrial/ product design agencies never really recovered from the financial crisis. Most of them don't do cutting edge tech projects but instead they have put their heads in sand like ostrichs. They do mostly very traditional industrial design, without any interaction or user experience design. Which is a really bad situation for me personally, because the reason I got into ID was that I want to work in creative usability and UX projects.
Anyhow, there is a lot happening in UX scene in this country. But it's happening in mid sized software companies, and in these new, specialized small UX agencies, which are coming from the HCI side of the business, if I have understood right.
So now the big questions for me are:
How do I get into this new UX design scene, with my background?
How do I get a job or an internship in one of these companies which don't really know too much about ID, and probably think that ID is nothing but pretty and very concrete products?
What kind of stuff should I do into my portfolio? What kind of stuff should I emphasize in my CV and cover letter?
What kind of things should I study by myself? Would studying HTML and CSS be the shortest way to UX design for me?
What I personally consider important in my skills and knowledge is that I have been interested in usability and UX already for years, and have read for example Don Norman's books, as well as some basic interaction design materials. And in my previous business studies I studied many courses of sociology as a minor.
Thanks if you had patience to read it until here, and thanks even more for any answers!
