Bridging the Gap - Hard Knowledge: Digital Design

I have mentioned the importance of bridging the gap with hard knowledge and skills that pertain to the industry and type of role I’m looking to move into.  To begin to understand which knowledge areas I need to get familiar with, I needed to target an area that I am interested in within the design/product development realm and would make immediate sense to pursue.

Digital Design

I have a personal interest in being an important part of a team that creates well designed products.  (I suppose this is the first hint at my interest in product development and I will explore this further in future posts.)  A product is not limited to physical objects - A beautiful, well conceived and useful product can also be digital, say a website or an app.

I decided to explore the digital end of the design spectrum first for a number of reasons:

1. I am interested in what makes a great digital product and the process it takes to do so.
2. There are companies I admire and want to be a part of doing great work in this field. 
3. I recognize that digital design reaches across several types of organizations: digital agencies, design firms, tech startups and companies with a complete or partial digital presence.
4. Digital design / digital product development has a need for project management and similar roles.

Next, I'll speak to the progress I am making learning different aspects of the digital design process.

Bridging the Gap: “Hard Knowledge”

“Hard Knowledge” is information pertaining to and specific to an industry or line of work.  The pharmaceutical industry is complex and I needed to learn and know very detailed information specific to my job.  The same is true for the industry I’m pursuing.  I have transferable professional knowledge that I will use from my experience in my last career, but there are PLENTY of knowledge areas that I need to understand so I can feel comfortable with the business, its processes and the work various teams are responsible for.

I have a big time interest in learning as much as I can about the design/digital design industry, including its technical areas.  I want to know what constitutes great design, how innovative products are taken from conception to launch/production, what is involved in running a successful project, etc., etc., etc.  I spend my time familiarizing myself with concepts and this is an ongoing endeavor.

How?

1. I take classes at General Assembly.
2. I attend as many Meetups as possible (this is a great, free resource to learn and meet other like-minded people)
3. I bother people - I network and set up as many informational interviews with as many people as possible for the sake of learning and getting as many unique perspectives as I can.
4. Read, Read, Read: I read industry and agency/firm news and blogs and I take time to work my way through books each day.

I’m hungry for information and I find ways to get the knowledge I need to begin to bridge the gap.  I will dig deeper into these topics in upcoming posts.

Bridging the Gap: Pharma to Design - Leverage Past Experience

I am making a move from the Pharmaceutical industry to the design/digital design world: Wow, how different could two disciplines be?  At first thought, very.  And my first thought is a correct and valid assumption in that I am planning to work in a radically different field.  With this being said, it was smart and strategic for me to consider the aspects of my past work that I enjoyed and excelled at and to leverage this experience.

There are a couple ways I look at leveraging my experience and skills:

1. I enjoy working on projects with teams and solving problems and I have years of experience doing so.  Why would I waste these efforts, especially if I enjoy these types of roles?  I have worked hard to get the experience and the skills I have now and I do not want to waste that effort and I shouldn’t have to.
2. It’s strategic: I made a connection (Project Management) between my past work experience and the field I want to work in. I look at this as a good “in,” a way for me to enter the design field, contribute immediately and have the opportunity to learn and expose myself to new knowledge.

  Why would I waste these efforts, especially if I enjoy these types of roles?  I have worked hard to get the experience and the skills I have now and I do not want to waste that effort and I shouldn’t have to.

…But only identifying my strengths will not get me to my next exciting career.  Although valuable, I have taken my experience from the pharmaceutical industry…I need to supplement that experience with specific “hard knowledge” and actual experience in the discipline I plan to work in. 

Bridging the Gap: How to get from Here to There

So, I've set my sights on a discipline to pursue: I am targeting a Project Management role at a Digital Agency or Design firm.  I spent a lot of effort evaluating the design industry and it was important to determine what experience/skills I already have and how I could strategically leverage my ability to make a move.  This is an important exercise because it helps inform the types and kinds of steps that I may need to take to “bridge the gap” so to speak - The “gap” being industry specific hard knowledge and experience.  

Supplementing the experience I already have with skills and experience I may need to excel in my next career is a complicated and lengthy phase and I will discuss pieces of it at a time in upcoming posts, but in general, my thought process went something like this:

1. I took time to think about and diagram out my work experience and skills.
2. I researched Project Management and other similar roles in the digital and design world to get a top level understanding of what is required to be successful (ongoing).
3. I compared the outputs from steps 1 and 2 to determine what I was missing (ongoing).
4. I set out to bridge that knowledge and experience gap (ongoing).

At the moment I’m heavily involved in finding the experience and hard knowledge/skills I need to succeed in the design world and I will detail the work I have been doing.  Some topics you can expect are those on education, independent research, industry meetings/talks, informational interviews and more.