I have news! This week I decided to take a jobby job at Bolt | Peters (BP), a UX firm in San Francisco, as their Social Interaction Lead. I am really excited about this and wanted to share my reasons why!
Great people
I have always liked Nate Bolt (El Presidente) and his crew at BP, and I’ve grown even fonder of them over the last month. I have been contracting with them on a research project about people’s Facebook and social networking activities. And I gave a talk at their User Research Friday, which was a blast!
One thing about working as a solo consultant is that I missed the fun of being part of a small, dynamic team. Now I have a built-in team of cool people to work with!
Much, much more client work
I have been lucky with all the awesome consulting opportunities that have come my way. January and February in particular were full of interesting client projects. But it’s hard to do the business development side of the consulting trade. My clients have all come from friend referrals and word-of-mouth. Luckily I have a great network and I am active in community events, but still it’s difficult to be constantly looking for new clients while balancing existing projects.
At Bolt | Peters, I can focus on the client work. I’ve actually really enjoyed the consulting lifestyle so far, so I’m looking forward to having many, many more interesting client projects with BP than I could have had on my own.
Experience is good
On that note, I have been stuck in this in-between world ever since leaving grad school in June. I have a Master’s degree but little “experience” in the field that most practitioners consider to be real experience. I actually have lots of experience doing a variety of things…And most of my experiences I have gone out and crafted for myself. Most of my positioning, insights, and ideas come from staying active in the community.
But at the end of the day, people hire you on resume experience. I’m at the point where I’m really ready to grow and learn from skilled practitioners in a field where I know I can have an impact. User experience is my passion, and social interaction design is as important as ever.
From research to social design
Thus, one of the exciting prospects for me is joining a company that is already well-positioned and well-respected in the community, and helping them expand into design and strategy-related offerings. A lot of my work will involve user research and product testing, at least at first, but I hope to help the company dive into new areas like social interaction design, strategy consulting, product development, etc. It’s my job to keep one foot in the community still (yay!) and initiate client projects that involve more than one-time usability testing.
I hope to see many friendly faces at South by Southwest in Austin this coming weekend. (Come to my panel on social search!) If I miss you there, I’ll be back in SF starting at BP as soon as I return!
12 Comments
Congratulations, Brynn. I’m happy for you. jay
Congrats and good luck at SXSW!
Congratulations Brynn! This sounds like a great move! I’m with you on the toughness of balancing business development and client work as an independent (I just joined Social Media Group a couple of weeks ago after two years as an indie). Working on client projects is definitely the most rewarding.
That’s fantastic! Sounds like a great fit. Congratulations, Brynn!
Whoohoo! Congrats honey!
Congrats!
Just found this Brynn; sorry to hear about the UCSD experience. That sucks, because I graduated from that same department and have nothing but nice things to say about my time there. Obviously your experience was much different, but it sounds like you’re in a great place and congrats on the new jobby job!
[@jschoenwald]
Sweet! Looking forward to hearing the continuing adventures…
Yay! Congratulations on finding a great job at a great place! (:
Congratulations! Best wishes to you at your new position — I hope you keep learning lots and get to work on exciting projects
Just saw this now, sounds smart. Congrats & enjoy!
Woohoo — congrats, Brynn!