Working in the interactive field generally requires an understanding of design process, visual and interaction design, technical production, and business skills.

In order to obtain experience in both design and technical production, I recommend students take courses that cover the subjects I’ve outlined below.  A student needs to spend time exploring different classes to find out what they are good at and what they enjoy doing. When working in interactive design, you may or may not be responsible for technical production. On many projects a separate technical team will be involved. But it’s good to understand the technical side of the interactive field. Even if you don’t become an expert in technical production, if you understand what’s involved, it will make you more employable— and a better team member on any project.

Visual and Interaction Design: Everything and anything about visual and interaction communication design is useful.

A student will need an understanding of the following mediums:
Web, Mobile, Exhibition (kiosks, touch screens etc.), Product, and Print

Although understanding Interactive Design is more than learning an assortment of applications,  a student should have a basic understanding of the following applications:

Photoshop, Illustrator, Acrobat, Fireworks, Dreamweaver, Flash, WordPress (or some other type of Content Management System), for motion: AfterEffects, 3D Studio Max, Cinema 4D, and for video: Final Cut Pro.

A student should find classes that focus on technical production and design, rather than classes which only cover a specific application such as Dreamweaver. I also believe a student’s learning needs to be self-directed. As a student, and also as a working professional, you will need to keep up with new information that develops within the Interactive field—a field which tends to experience more rapid changes than others (such as print, for example).

I’m not aware of an educational track covering all of these skills outside of applying to a BFA or MFA program. Even with an advanced degree, your studies will be deficient in the area of business and industry experience. (*See the link below for more information about what a curriculum should include).

*For more ideas on what you need to know for Interactive Design, see Leslie Jensen-Inman’s website Teach the Web. She has conducted interviews with over 30 web and interactive professionals and asked the following question:

If you could create your dream curriculum for web design and development, what courses and information would you include? Why? What courses and information now in such programs would you eliminate? Why?

Here are the answers.

The answer may surprise you,

The biggest challenge is managing students’ expectations.

While in London last week, I had the opportunity to talk to a teacher about his experiences instructing high school students. He teaches high school students how to think about digital media, to conceive digital projects and to complete their ideas using whatever tool is the best for the project — be it HTML, Flash, Processing etc. Admirably, these same students go on to teach middle school students similar types of digital media skills.

I asked him what his biggest challenge is teaching digital media. “Many times students come up with ideas that have the complexity of a graduate school thesis.”

My challenge teaching runs along the same line. I find that students are so familiar with complex digital media solutions, our digital media has gotten so sophisticated — be it highly interactive websites, smart phone applications, seamless delivery of broadband content — that there is an underlying assumption the things we use everyday are somehow easy to create.

For my graphic design students there is this common frustration:

What a student can imagine and design, they may not be able to technically create.

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Update 08/14/09: In all fairness, students are not the only ones who assume digital solutions are easy to create and implement. The public in general does not possess a basic understanding of what’s involved in conceptualizing, designing and building interactive projects. In large part, the digital media community is responsible for educating the public in order to develop this understanding.