There’s a lot I take for granted these days with interactive design. The sheer ubiquity of interactive design online has been helped by the surge in talent availability. On the flip side, it’s led to the commoditization of the market, which has pushed rates lower; my own random client polling suggests that they’re expecting to pay no more than $20/hour for contract “flash work”. Because of this, I’ve been angling myself more toward pure programming / original content creation.

There’s probably still room for an information architect / interactive designer who knows the ins and outs of digital media production. Here’s two must-have skills:

• the gift of true understanding – Some people try to “get” what you’re trying to do, others just shove your stuff into the most convenient box that’s on hand. You’ll appreciate someone who takes the time to try to understand what you’re doing and provide useful structuring principles…especially if you’re trying to figure it all out yourself.

• the gift of narrative – Understanding is great, but if you can’t express it clearly you’re still up the creek. An expert interactive designer / animator knows how to pace things out so they make sense.

Then there’s the bits that a good animator knows:

• the gift of timing & sequencing – A good animation has rhythm, bounce, and the uncanny power of keeping you in the moment. Too slow, and the audience can see the gags coming through stifled yawns. Too fast, and they’ll be left wondering what’s going on and uninterested.

• the gift of motion – Sensitivity to how things move and through that contributes to the emotional and dramatic tone of the animation is a rare and wonderful thing. Being able to command it is rarer still. It’s closely related to timing.

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p>And finally there’s all the 2D design skills that go into making a great screen:

• the gift of typograpy – how to lay out a block of type so it sings
• the gift of 2d composition – how to control contrast, position, tone, color in support of what you want to communicate
• the gift of 3d composition – how to control layers of overlapping information
• the gift of cheese – that bag of tricks that gets your screen design through to the end
• the gift of color harmony – the ability to taste and smell color, and bend it to your will

And technical things one ought to know:

• the gift of programming – being able to program without totally relying on code snippets you’ve snipped from FlashKit
• the gift of sound & music – being able to layer, process, and edit audio streams for use in interactives, construct interactive soundscapes, and time things out to music certainly helps the animator
• the eye – the ability to see what works, what doesn’t, and why…instantaneously
• the user model – knowing how a user will perceive and react to the presentation of information on a screen.
• the history of the medium – knowing what’s been done, what’s worked and what’s failed in interactive media.

So there’s a lot of stuff here to know, and I haven’t even touched upon storyboarding, project management, script writing, and the rest of the skills that go into making a good concept in the first place.