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Two questions:
1. Jakob Nielsen had a column on May 27 about the salaries of usability
specialists. What kinds of jobs do these people have? One tech writer had
suggested to me that finding a job as strictly a usability specialist
sounded difficult. (I am particularly interested in software usability.) He
said that most companies do not need a usability person full-time because
most companies are not constantly developing new software. Does anyone agree
or disagree based on evidence that is more convincing than mere opinion?
2. I am currently a senior in undergraduate studying technical
communication. If I wanted to study usability in graduate school, are there
programs specifically geared toward this, or would I have to find a related
field to study, such as human-computer interaction or human factors? As a
side note, I'm curious if anyone on the list has such degrees, or even
degrees in cognitive psychology, industrial psychology, or industrial
engineering. Those are fields that seem to overlap with tech writing to some
degree, and I think they are interesting fields.
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