Show Time: 33 minutes 40 seconds
Download mp3 (audio only)
Download m4a (with visuals, requires iTunes, Quicktime, or similar)
Podcast Summary
In this episode Chris Baum speaks with Donna Spencer, Lynne Polischuik, Justin Davis and Erin Jo Richey at the 2012 IA Summit about their interactive panel discussion Taking the Plunge: Diving Into Indie UX. They share practical and personal considerations of being an indie designer, including how to to get over the fear of making the jump, where and how to find clients, managing the business side of design and what it’s like to work alone.
Quotes
“When you first start this you are really insulated…when I looked back it in the first six months to a year I didn’t make any money! When you’re in that initial phase you’re really excited… I think if you looked at it objectively you’d never do it.”
“I spent three years working my butt off to have all of the buffers in place… if there’s no work there’s no backup second income. It took a good couple of years to get enough money in the bank… where I could finally start to relax and say no to work knowing other things would come up and not kill me.”
“I got pushed out of the nest with a reasonable size contract.. and I was OK for a couple of years but I look back now on projects I took on that now I never would have taken on… taking on the wrong clients, taking on the wrong projects… I got to a point recently last Fall where I asked am I happy is this where I want to be?”
“I have been an independent for just over a year now… I had joined the agency that would come in as an analyst and then transition to an Information Architect. We decided that they didn’t want to take the agency in the direction of UX or IA and we talked about the role within the company… I didn’t want to focus on the same types of marketing … I did get laid off but I didn’t have a backup plan put in place.”
Thanks!
Thanks to “Vitamin Talent”:http://vitamintalent.com/ and Morgan Kaufmann’s “It’s Our Research”:http://www.amazon.com/Its-Our-Research-Stakeholder-Buy-/dp/0123851300/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1331302670&sr=1-1 for sponsoring this podcast.
And thanks to “ASIS&T”:http://www.asis.org/ for their support of the “IA Summit”:http://iasummit.org/ and this podcast.