I do just as much work on business processes and industrial manufacture as I do with websites and software. The design process I have built for myself is capable of adapting to as much as I can possibly handle, sometimes more.
I tweak it all the time and add to it what I can from my reading, writing and everything I can get my hands on. Talk to people, skill number one.
This is really getting at the heart of the question. If I asked what the tools were for interaction design, we’d have lots of structured methods and tools. So, what skills have transferred well and what have had to be adapted more? I know that, from my perspective, a lot of these things fall into tools like: 5 Whys; Define, Measure, Analyze, Improve, Control, and Validate; and value stream mapping. (Though, simply learning to identify and ask the person who can best solve it is the evergreen solution)
As for the personal insight component: it’s impossible to move forward when you’re unwilling to learn what must be most useful for you. No-one wants to deal with a student who won’t be taught. I especially understand the latter as I have to deal with it in my students.
From my perspective, however, It’s more than that. In my case, I’ve spent a lot of time in Human Factors specialty, and have a distinct background in process improvement and systems analysis, so I have a lot of project work in either industrial manufacturing processes or serious lab studies. However, my schooling is not visually-focused. I’ve got an engineering / applied psychology background that focused on problem solving, ethnography, and data and have been learning more of the visual / aesthetic components. I’m still definitely a beginner there, and I think I’ll probably look into IxDA’s online short courses to fill in some of the gaps.
I’m learning to balance the “T-shaped” individual concept. In my background, I’ve had to learn the dangers of being a unicorn. As a lab founder, if it needed to be done, I had to learn to do it. I also had to meet departmental academic expectations to focus on highly technical, non-applicable topics before I was able to pursue what I was genuinely good at. Stretching to too many things at once made me miserable (and unsuccessful). I ended up behind in both categories, as I wasn’t particularly good at the former and I was too exhausted to really pursue the latter.
I’m working to best apply my skills and translate them in a way that lets me do what I do well while shoring up my weaknesses. I’ve spent a long time learning whatever is useful, but there’s always more skills to learn than there is time to learn them. By the end of the day, over-generalization can make you into a dilettante, not an expert.
