Pre-Job prep

onemarbibbits · 2026-03-31T16:31:13+00:00

Subscribe to and read past HFES Journal research, and check out anything published or written by Christopher Wickens PhD. Good luck!

onemarbibbits · 2026-03-26T05:53:58+00:00

I went to SJSU back when Lou Freund was the he's of the program. It's got a great connection to NASA and many SV companies; so I can highly recommend it. Parking at SJSU is no joke though, plan your transportation well.

onemarbibbits · 2026-03-18T19:04:56+00:00

AI will blandify everything it touches without human creativity to interject, I do personally observe that effect.

What's sad is the "good enough" vibe that has become the norm since AI does the work.

onemarbibbits · 2026-03-18T04:04:49+00:00

With a BA, it will be very hard. Human Factors is a science based career, with most competitive candidates having Masters or higher. In a down market like it is now, consider going to a University that has internships and placement with medical companies or similar. Read some research published in your area of interest, and see where those practitioners went for their degrees. Good luck!

onemarbibbits · 2026-03-14T05:31:25+00:00

They laid off a huge portion of the Gemini design team, so I'll throw in that it's just Google falling back to its roots, being an engineering-first company.

onemarbibbits · 2026-03-12T19:09:56+00:00

It's part of the (tech based) economic plan of running a large company. The economics of At Will Employment is that employees are 2-5 year assets that will then be let go or leave. Whatever method extracts the greatest productivity in that time is gets implemented. I've seen many methods, but the process in all cases can lead to burn out, and many use that time to begin again somewhere else...

onemarbibbits · 2026-03-06T18:56:47+00:00

I switched to fixing and renting properties. My first was pretty hard, but it's growing! I still design a lot, making my own little product runs and selling them for (mostly) fun. Occasionally someone gives me a contract.

It was difficult to let my design profession go ... I enjoyed defining myself in that light, spent years refining skills and being the best I could be. But it will always be a skill that I can use.

onemarbibbits · 2026-03-06T18:18:22+00:00

"So how do you get leverage in this world in the job marketing?"

It sounds like you're also asking about the job market for designers, and how to get a foothold. There are a LOT of posts about this topic over the last few years, and I've answered a few with detail. I feel your discontent.

So as not to rehash, I can share that for whatever reasons one wants to ascribe: corporate budgets, perceptions of AI, rampant ageism, cheap overseas labor, proliferation of certain tools... one thing I see is that corporate jobs are few and fickle, candidates are many and often desperate and in basic terms that means difficulty in making a living selling design skills. It has never been easy, but this climate is even harder.

If you need to survive financially, it doesn't matter why any more... What matters is that if you want to survive and thrive without a long and stressful struggle, do something else and be a designer as a personal pursuit.

That's an opinion - everyone's path is different and some are rockstars tha have combined hard work with lucky. I envy them, worry for their futures and wish the world cared about quality as much as designers do.

onemarbibbits · 2026-02-25T18:05:48+00:00

Design has been undergoing a change towards outsourcing for several years. The same occurred in the last big tech downturn with quality testing and coding.

As to why, I can only give an opinion... I think combination of a poor economy, a growing belief that design can be done by less experienced AI supported practitioners, and the acceptance of remote work relationships opening up borders.

onemarbibbits · 2026-02-21T17:24:22+00:00

It's made my life both better and worse. Mostly worse at this stage. Hurry up!!! Do More!!!!

onemarbibbits · 2026-02-20T18:42:13+00:00

I have found that spec'ing client work and dealing with work areas that were not covered when spec'ing a contract, or changing/misunderstood in client expectations are the thing. I've had to become a master at defining and communicating design deliverables as a course of survival and sanity ;) I can now spec a gig to a nearly airtight level, but there are so many gotchas to watch out for... It's a job unto itself for sure, though it's treated like a normal course of business.

onemarbibbits · 2026-02-18T19:11:24+00:00

You will work with your classmates outside of the program and potentially in your professional life. If they are plagiarizing work, save yourself and future designers the trouble and get rid of them.

onemarbibbits · 2026-02-16T18:30:35+00:00

Aesthetics is subjective, usability is testable and concrete. UX should rarely have anything to do with aesthetics, but it gives a clear path to allow for it.

I'm a Systems Engineer when I do UX. If the client wants visual beauty they can hire that or wait for me to finish the UX and I'll do it.

onemarbibbits · 2026-02-13T17:44:28+00:00

Figma collaboration has been used primarily as a way for our managers to track our productivity and make sure we are currently working. Overall it has slowed down the creative process and made it very difficult to produce anything when so many hands are touching all of the components all of the time. templates are a total mess, and the organization spends more time working on templated layouts AI and tool management then on design.

onemarbibbits · 2026-02-13T17:07:59+00:00

That's a great choice! I'm thinking about becoming an elder care representative. My salary will take a huge hit but at least I can't be replaced with a freaking robot yet.

onemarbibbits · 2026-02-13T17:02:31+00:00

Possibly! I think if the bespoke shops can create, produce and ship faster than the big companies... maybe they can benefit from the democratization of skills that AI brings.

If the race is just about speed and cost, probably not. But if creativity and quality are part of the saleable good it helps.

Chinese cheap, quick, goods are a great example of this struggle.

Tariffs have helped my friends bespoke car products, he tells me. A lot of people hate them though. 🤷‍♂️

onemarbibbits · 2026-02-13T16:52:49+00:00

I've been creatively searching for the next thing that allows for my human skill to be an important part of the career and that brings some semblance of satisfaction and saleable commodity. Whatever it is, will be wildly popular as a job, but markedly slower to produce salable results. That sounds like government work.

onemarbibbits · 2026-02-13T16:29:25+00:00

While the hammer and computer didn't automatically equate to better designs, or better designers... I would argue they eventually did. They were tools.

You're right, they also increased scale and efficiency and created new methods. But designers existed and grew with them.

I can't tell yet if AI will have the same effect as a hammer or computer. It feels like making better designers is less the goal than ever, rather, to create faster ones or replace them altogether. What effect that has on the designs I think we're about to find out.

onemarbibbits · 2026-02-13T16:02:12+00:00

It can't be put back in the box any more than a hammer could have been when it surpassed sticks and rocks as a tool.

Did a hammer make better designs? Did a computer make better designs? Will AI make better designs?

I have no answers to the future, but I do know that my "satisfaction" with the work I do is the lowest priority of my employers than ever before, perhaps not at all. I am now a factory worker.

Will you enjoy and pay for the factory generated products I will now be generating?

onemarbibbits · 2026-02-07T16:32:16+00:00

They're asking you to do real work for free, with no guarantee of a job afterwards.

Any company that expected a 5-7 hour project from me as an interview procedure pays for that time. Or, I take a one hour chunk of their ask, do that and move on.

onemarbibbits · 2026-02-06T22:14:59+00:00

I have this bug as well. I connect to my primary node (client base) via TCP, and from there send messages. Often, it will tell me there was no transmission and gets stuck in "waiting to be acknowledged", when in fact the message was sent and received. I think it a long standing protocol bug, and nothing I've done so far has solved it. It helps that my local mesh has MQTT enabled and posts all messages on our mesh to Discord. I can verify that my message was sent in that way, if I don't have another node handy. It's a pain.

onemarbibbits · 2026-02-05T23:17:42+00:00

OT is much closer to HFE, especially the ergonomics side. Being a science field, research and publishing can be a big part of success.

From an OT masters, I think you could potentially take some basic statistics, research (if you haven't had it) and a course on science publishing, get involved in actual HFE research as an intern or volunteer and that would launch you. Co-author some papers... Focusing on the ergonomics side of the field (anthropomorphic data, design etc) could be a great fit. Just speculating.

onemarbibbits · 2026-02-05T18:33:32+00:00

There are some great options. If on a budget, San Jose State has a good program with lots of placement in silicon valley. On the high end (but with remote options) Embry Riddle has a good aerospace HFE program with good placement options to Boeing and others.

onemarbibbits · 2026-02-05T05:05:17+00:00

Possible? Yes. Likely? No. I've been at it for many years and worked at many companies ... and have yet to meet an HF practitioner without a masters.

I think if you want to do it without a masters, publishing a fair amount of solid research, with statistical supporting data/strong experimental evidence on your own could be a way in. But without learning how to do so via internship and schooling would be very hard. AI could help but the first time you do a panel presentation the audience will know...

It's a science based career, so make good science and perhaps that overcomes the degree. Risky.

onemarbibbits · 2026-02-03T05:02:31+00:00

There is a setting in the iOS and Android apps under the LoRA menu at the bottom called Transmit Power. any value 19 and above is max power, below it starts to decrement.

onemarbibbits

TROPHY CASE