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IA/UX Salary Surveys

Based on a recent request on the IA Institute Job Board, I have compiled some IA/UX salary information resources. As soon as the IAI salary survey comes out, I’ll post a link here.

Very few of the postings I receive on the IA Institute Job Board have salary information, but a typical salary/rate conversion is:

salary = 2/3 rate times 2080 (40 hours per week for a year)

The 1/3 reduction represents the cost of your medical, vacation and other benefits plus social security taxes that the company pays.

For $75/hour, this equals $104,000/year, which appears to be on the high end for those jobs where I do have salary data. Salary.com shows salary+bonus capping around 110K for most experienced IA/UX type jobs, although their job titles don’t conform perfectly to the industry yet.

The IA Institute is supposed to publish the results of the 2005 survey this month. They are a bit behind schedule, but keep looking for the survey at http://www.iainstitute.org.

Some other surveys:

2004 UX Salary Survey
http://www.spiritsoftworks.com/resources/2004-salary-survey.htm

2003 AIfIA Salary Survey
http://iainstitute.org/pg/salary_survey_2003.php

IA Wiki – links to more salary surveys
http://www.iawiki.net/SalarySurveys

Salary.com Salary Wizard
http://www.salary.com/salary/layoutscripts/sall_display.asp

Since Salary.com job titles don’t appear to reflect titles used in the IA industry, here are some equivalent job titles:

Interface Designer = User Experience & HCI
Content Engineer = Information Architect

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IA processes from Peter Jones

From an online discussion group:

Jones, P.H. (2002). Embedded values in process and practice: Interactions between disciplinary practice and formal innovation processes. 11th International Forum on Design Management Research. Boston, June 2002.

This academic article discussed the problems with structured process, and the types of informal practices that were adopted by internal communities in spite of process to accommodate the needs of projects. In some situations, informal practices also subverted well-constructed processes.

Jones, P.H. (2002). When successful products prevent strategic innovation. Design Management Review, 13 (2).

The research covered the range of process types which affect product design:

Organizational Management, Market Research, Product Lifecycle, Product Management, Project Management, Product Design and Development

Although I did not do an exhaustive survey of processes by name, I covered in-depth cases of software product development companies using 10 case projects. The thesis of the research was:

“As the successful firm embraces more conservative business values over time, they embed into management processes, from market research to human resources, from R&D to sales. As both customer intimacy and margin values unify with everyday project and product management practice, these values become implicit and more resistant to change. The same values that create team loyalty, organizational purpose, and a shared sense of identity also implicitly limit types of work practices, investments, and even customers. With values an ultimate source of decisions, people cannot easily see these constraints, let alone question their impact.”

Where we get into conflicts with process:

“In software product companies we typically find creative independence residing with designers and developers more than other functions. As members of expert-based competencies, they represent disciplines educated by professional values, and also their own community of practice values. While innovation values are typically espoused within design groups, research points to the prevalence of values conflicts between design and other organizational functions. The range of conflict manifests from everyday disagreements within project teams to management’s reorganization of design groups. The most common conflicts emerge as disputes over appropriate processes for product design, and over ownership of activities in design practice, from customer testing to product interface definition.”

I’m a strong advocate of growing your own process, and describe ways of doing that in my book Team Design, which also covers and evaluates development processes, especially those used by teams in collaborative practice.

Peter Jones
REDESIGN RESEARCH innovation insight
http://redesignresearch.com

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CITI Advanced Training

We will be scheduling a CITI training for CBs and CBOs in Brooklyn this spring. The date is dependent upon the number of participants. Training will include basic GIS principles, GIS desktop software and tips for making your own maps. Contact us at citi@mas.org if you would like to participiate.

Additional information about the CITI Youth program and how to find rezoning areas can be found in the March issue of the CITI Newsletter at http://www.myciti.org/newsletters/2005-03.html.

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GoogleMaps

Discussion of GoogleMaps has been lively on my User Interface design lists. Overall ratings for Google Maps are good, but I have problems with the way they locate places based on search.

GoogleMaps
http://maps.google.com/
Posters say they like that you can drag the map and that the directions appear to be more accurate than MapQuest or Yahoo! Maps. To find places on the map, you can use their search boxes on the right or enter a search in the bar above. It wasn’t apparent at first exactly how to find groups of things like hotels or grocery stores, which is organized as a layer on Yahoo (click a box marked restaurants). I had to take the Tour to figure that the search bar is the way to do this. Using the search bar you can plot places like restaurants, hotels, etc. based on info on web pages they have stored, which is sort of wild but not always accurate or complete. I prefer Yahoo!’s ability to plot items that are categorized as what they are vs having the word in its name, e.g., if you search for “Farm” you get a lot of State Farm agents.

But one thing Google does well is to tie a particular location to its “more like this” search function. If you click a search result, it will point you to the website of the entity in question or a list of websites of nearby related entities. This is less seeing it on a map than finding what may be nearby. Unfortunately, if you try to use the back button to return to the map search results, you get the default GoogleMaps view.

As for the interface, I had a tendency to reset the map back to the entire US view by accident, while using the zoom function. The Zoom and Reset buttons are a bit close and not otherwise labeled. Reset button looks a lot like “Recenter” to me. Also, if you pan off of the US and try to zoom in, you get a lot of blank images with red Xs. And don’t try to find South America, Europe or Russia. The oceans go on forever….

Here are a some similar maps in other parts of the world:

Search.ch Map (Switzerland)
http://map.search.ch/
A blogger recently suggested that Google copied the interface from this site. It uses an aerial photo layer that is fun to zoom into, but probably not entirely necessary for the purpose of the site.

Map My India
http://mapmyindia.com/

from a post on sigia-l:

Although the quality, accuracy and detail [of mapmyindia] isn’t comparable but at least in some respects such as download speed and ease of marking major landmarks, it’s actually better than Google Maps and Mapquest.

To see how it works, search for Juhu, Mumbai, Maharashtra. You can plot hotels, banks, ATMs etc on the map using the menu on right. One cannot however, link to a particular location without subscription.

The design of the site is led by a 19 years old Stanford sophomore,
Rohan Verma. http://nripulse.com/Archives/Profile_Rohan.htm

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Mini Conference on Human Factors in Complex Sociotechnical Systems

The South Jersey Chapter of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society
will be hosting a mini-conference on April 28 & 29, 2005, entitled
“Mini-Conference on Human Factors in Complex Sociotechnical Systems.”
This event will be held at the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA)
William J. Hughes Technical Center (WJHTC), located near the Atlantic
City International Airport, New Jersey.

The mini-conference is an opportunity for researchers and
practitioners in human factors, human-computer interaction, and
related fields, who work with complex sociotechnical systems, to share
their research, designs, techniques, and lessons learned with each
other. This is also a good medium for researchers to communicate
their ongoing research as well as students to get a chance to present
at a conference. This will be the first year of the conference and we
hope the quality of the program will make it a regular event.

The mini-conference committee is seeking submissions for presentations
and posters that would be of interest to human factors researchers and
practitioners, as well as others interested in behavioral science,
engineering, and management. Papers should focus on domains that
involve multiple users with different knowledge levels, abilities, and
task needs, who interact with complex tools and with one another. We
are especially interested in papers related to, but not limited to,
domains with substantial safety, security, or economic implications.
Some examples of these domains are Aviation, Air Traffic Control,
Military, Law Enforcement, Homeland Security, Emergency Management,
Medical Process Control, and Finance and Securities Trading. We
encourage submissions discussing works in progress as well as
submissions from students seeking an opportunity to present their work.

The deadline for submitting to the conference is February 14, 2005 and
the committee has already started accepting submissions. Proceedings
for the conference will be published in a CD ROM format and
distributed to the conference attendees.

For more information please visit www.sjhfes.org

For any questions, please contact: miniconference@sjhfes.org

Send submissions to: submissions@sjhfes.org

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AIfIA sponsors metadata practices conference

From aifia.org:

AIfIA sponsors conferences and events helping to build the practice of
information architecture. Learn more about AIfIA’s sponsorship program
at http://aifia.org/pg/ia_events_sponsorship.php#000247

***********
September 30, 2004 — AIfIA will sponsor Metadata for Interoperability
in the Global Corporate Environment, a pre-conference for the DC-2004
International Conference on Dublin Core and Metadata Applications.

The one-day pre-conference program takes place on October 10, 2004 in
Shanghai, China, and is expected to attract around 100 people. The
pre-conference workshop addresses the metadata lifecycle — creation,
management, and use — as it applies to enterprise applications and
activities, with focus on interoperability enabling international
business. Experts will present case studies about interesting
applications of metadata, and then discuss issues related to metadata
creation, management, and use in the enterprise.

“This pre-conference program will help participants learn how to
optimize the early stages of a metadata program for international and
cross-cultural deployments,”said Makx Dekkers, DCMI Managing Director.
“Support from AIfIA underscores the vital role of information
architecture in developing a metadata program.”

“We are pleased to support this important initiative,” said AIfIA
President Victor Lombardi. “We believe that information architecture
can help inform the process for aligning business goals to a metadata
initiative.”

More details about this event are available at the DCMI conference
website at http://dc2004.library.sh.cn/.