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Maybe you would expect as a designer coming in that you will do a lot of prototypes, but hey, what a surprise, you'll start doing workshops and presentations and talk to people in Slack 24-7. So sometimes it comes with all sorts of unexpected tasks that you're supposed to do. ♪
Hello everyone, welcome to a new episode of Honest UX Talks. I'm joined as usual by Anfisa and we are going to discuss a topic that's extremely juicy for anyone looking to break into the UX industry, for any aspiring designer out there or people who are starting to explore the industry in their first early days.
So the topic for today will be is UX design for you? Which is a question that we probably I at least get a lot on my Instagram profile. I'm sure that Anfisa gets as well. So people, I think it's absolutely natural that you ask yourself, am I right for this profession before you start putting in a lot of effort to transition into it?
So we are here to try to answer this question and to try to help people orientate in the early days and understand whether the effort to break and transition into the UX design role is right for them.
And of course, we won't promise absolute truths and absolute unique answers. We'll touch on a lot of nuances and different perspectives. But I think it's a topic that will be very valuable for a lot of people. So
before we move on into tackling some of the questions around this big question, I want to hear how Anfisa's week went. So Anfisa, how was your week? Okay, welcome everybody. Thank you so much for listening and tuning in for another episode. Super excited to have this topic today. I'm pretty sure a lot of people could benefit from it. Even the people who are already in the industry and still asking themselves, am I a right fit? Am I
am I doing it because I'm a good fit and stuff like this so I think it's a definitely great topic to tackle my week was interesting my week was interesting because as you just yeah as we just discussed privately before starting the recording I kind of you know you've been already pretty much throughout this journey with me as I was discussing the new launch and
the new rebranding, the new content strategy. And now basically I was just discussing with Ioana that yesterday I kind of made up my mind that I don't think that Instagram is working out anymore. And I know that some people were shocked. Everybody was asking me like, what the heck? You just started this whole thing again. And I'm like, they were asking why?
And the reason behind is pretty simple, honestly. It's just not working out. Like the effort you put into it, the amount of valuable content you create, it's just not the proper place any longer. Yes, it's been a while since Instagram was around. The community was really active and really amazing the last two years, but...
Honestly speaking, from, I guess, half a year or so, I can see that it's just not about education any longer. It's much more about entertainment, socializing, fun, jokes, reels and engagement, but really not much more about the nerdy stuff that I want to share. And I'm still excited to share a lot of resources and goodies and interesting points and lessons I'm doing throughout the journey.
Instagram is not the right place any longer. And if I want to keep pursuing this, it's like knocking the closed door. It's not the right fit. People come to Instagram for different reasons, not to educate themselves, not to learn something, not to gain interesting insights. So yeah, as hard as it sounds, I'm kind of parting my ways with Instagram. I'll try to still stay there for all those jokes and fun and maybe
Stay in touch with the community because I think it's amazing and you guys are just rocking it, honestly. But honestly, yeah, I will try to change my strategy in terms of content positioning and move on to other platforms, more text-based platforms, such as maybe email list. I already started the Telegram channel. Medium, maybe. We'll see. We'll see how it goes. I'm kind of open right now to try out new platforms and maybe start building the new medium for Telegram.
for writing and preparing also the book, I guess, because the writing skill is something I want to focus on moving forward.
at this, yeah, in this year. So that is what it is. I'm very sorry if, you know, I've disappointed somebody with, you know, making this big boom launch and then kind of moving away from it. But I need to be honest, the more I push something that doesn't work out, the more I frustrate myself, the more I'm kind of living in the illusion that something will work when it's not. So I just want to be agile and kind of, you know,
be open and try and do other things that could work out better. So yeah, that's about me. How about you, Ioana? First of all, before I go on and answer my question,
my experience with the last week, I just want to say congrats on FISA. I think it's very brave because I know that you put a lot of work into building the Instagram community and it's been five years and you've been like the pioneer of Instagram content for UX designers. And I think that you're really brave and
powerful and courageous to say, okay, this is, this doesn't work for me anymore. Cause I think many people, it's like a bad relationship in which you simply stay because you've been in for a long time. And I think it's really brave to end it. And I think that indeed you will find platforms on which you could bring a, you
you could feel like the value that you put out there reaches more people and yeah you'll feel happier with what you're doing so yeah congrats for the courage and in terms of how my week went yeah it's been an intensive week working on the school
As our listeners may or may not know, I am launching UX design school. It's more on the realms of a boot camp, but we're trying to not necessarily label it as a boot camp because we're trying to correct some things that we know don't work in boot camps.
And so, yeah, we're working heavily right now while we're finishing up the website. We prepared a video in which we're discussing our mission, our vision, the values that we have. And so it's getting super real. We're very close to launching it and to not only announce it, but also start the first cohort. People already are showing up online.
interested and so it's really it's really exciting and this is taking up all of my free time apart from the baby time and so yeah anybody who's interested check out my Instagram where I will be posting all the information my Instagram UX goodies where I'll be posting all the information around the school and what you have to do to apply and start learning UX design with us
So with that, yeah, it's exciting. I'm just like, I wish I would be a newbie right now to take your course. But yeah, but anyway, yeah. Thank you so much. Yeah. Yeah. So getting back to our topic for today, is UX design for you or is UX design right for me? A question that anybody moving into the design industry or considering to move into the design industry will ask themselves.
And so I would say that we start by kind of circulating between ourselves some ideas around which are the qualities that prove to be valuable
in the UX design role and by qualities, I kind of think more about soft skills because of course the answer will never be, oh, you need to learn Photoshop. You need to know Photoshop that will make you a good designer. It's obviously not true. We've been through it in another episode about tools, but yeah, what are the soft skills or attributes that can make you valuable or can help you succeed as a UX designer? What are your thoughts on this stuff?
That's a great starter, I think, because interestingly enough, usually people will start from the opposite direction, right? By learning tools and hard skills and thinking that once you have done, you know, once you build your portfolio, you're using some great design tools, that's it.
Whereas, yeah, I love that we are framing it from the different angle that maybe a good starter is not to learn the skills, the hard skills, but actually to think about your personal traits or characteristics that could indicate you that it could be a good fit for you to start as a designer, as a UX designer at least. So for me personally, this is like a very, very broad topic because honestly speaking, I think that UX is very cross-functional, meaning that soft skills are hyper-important.
Even if we talk about like the ratio of hard skills to soft skills, it's very hard to say. I think it's very different from company to company. So depending where you are working, in which context is a design agency, which is a bit more about hard skills. Is it a product company? For me personally, it's more about soft skills. Is it something in the middle? If you are working as a freelancer, you basically need to wear all the hats from A to Z. So it's like you need to be super unicorn. But
long story short about the you know the ux design soft skills i think that again the ratio could be different 50 50 20 80 um
60/40, it depends really where you are. However, soft skills are a part of our work. You want it or not, it's something that you need to hone. Otherwise, it's very hard to succeed in whatever context you are working in. My personal opinion is that you have to focus on soft skills as a 50% of your portfolio. It needs to be an asset. Without soft skills, it's very hard to find a good job that satisfies your needs, has efficient processes and communication in place.
and you know doesn't frustrate any anybody in the end as a result so it is a very important there are a bunch of skills i think any soft skill you take there is definitely an application for it in ux design industry my personal intake on this is that i think most importantly you have to start with being an open-minded person i don't even know if it's a soft skill i think and it's a
Maybe it's an attribute or it's a characteristic of a person that you can work on. I don't even know if it's a skill, but I think open-mindedness is super critical because being open-minded means that you're able to listen, you can trust, you work on your emotional intelligence, you work on your emotions in general, your...
You know, you're not the person who is trying to argue all the time and then, you know, being defensive and all of that. It's the person who is willing to be open and to listen and try to understand and try to find solutions and maybe negotiate the solutions if needed. So it's very critical and important. For me personally, it's almost like an entry point to your soft skill portfolio, if you can say so.
Specific skills that I think are super critical for designers are such skills as empathy, communication, collaboration, critical thinking, emotional intelligence, and some others. And why I think those skills are quite important for designers is because empathy helps you to understand others. It basically builds this rapport between you as the professional and the
people, right? Who you are designing. So it's about understanding emotions of others, listening to them, care about them, understanding what they are saying, understanding what they're trying to say between the lines. When you develop those empathy skills,
even though I know that people are saying that empathy is very overrated, I think it's super important. You know, asking yourself, are you able to listen to what they're trying to say? So when they're saying something, are you thinking about the next question you want to ask? Are you stressing out about being able to ask all the questions that you have prepared? Or are you actually trying to be open and listen to what they're saying and asking a lot of why's and trying to elaborate on what they're saying? So just extend it on what they're saying.
So for me, yes, it's about focusing on them, not on yourself.
communication obviously is also a skill that you can develop it's about being able to articulate your decisions being a rational person who can back up their decision solutions questions can yeah can articulate basically any decisions you're doing because communication is the key in collaboration and just like we have established ux design is very cross-functional industry where you have to work with different different people and sometimes very different heads
So being able to speak different languages is important and also being able to articulate your solutions is important.
um collaboration obviously negotiation facilitation all of that part is very important um critical thinking again are you jumping into conclusions or are you asking questions are you asking broad um open questions first rather than you know trying to validate your your decisions already or you're actually asking people open-ended questions so um
So yeah, being able to be open and not jump into conclusions and critical things through every single answer and insight you derived is important. And I guess final point would be here, the emotional intelligence, because I think
you know, being able to be a better person for the team is super important. It affects the, you know, the company culture, affects the, um, company processes. It affects the satisfaction level, how people are working with you, how you're dealing with the hard situations, hard moments, um,
How you are managing your bad moods. Are you, again, defensive when somebody is telling you that design doesn't work out? So all these parts. I don't know if it's like something that you have to develop before you jump into the profession, but I'm definitely sure you will develop those skills as soon as you start working as a designer. There are definitely things that you can work out throughout, you know, your life. So some skills don't necessarily need to be connected directly to your design journey. But I think that...
those are the skills that you will definitely need to apply in your, you know, in your practical work. Yeah, it's been a lot. What about you? What about your understanding? I think that you already touched upon some of the things that I also find important. Many of the things you described for me fall into the realm, under the realm of self-awareness, which I think that is essential for not just for any designer, but for any person in the world, for any human. So,
So self-awareness, I think, sits at the core of being able to observe yourself in a net neutral way to understand your biases, to be able to let them go, to not be a person who creates conflict, but let other people be and observe them and observe your interaction. So, yeah, I think that self-awareness is something that I want to state by itself because I think it's super powerful. And I think that you could foster self-awareness
Through practicing introspection, journaling is another powerful tool that will help you with improving this life skill. And also therapy for anybody who wants to explore their inner world and their past and their connections and how their brain works.
therapy is something super valuable as well. And I think that self-awareness will set you up for success in whichever career you choose, but especially as a designer where you really have to fight biases, just like you said. Also, you already touched on critical thinking. I love the critical thinking conversation because I think that it's the best way by which you're sure that you don't get too attached
to particular ideas, findings, insights, solutions. So critical thinking will help you reflect in a neutral way at the design process and be able to actually serve the users and not your ego tendencies. And so, but it will also help you with understanding
with operating with systems with being able to make connections so it's really another life skill i'd say that will prove very valuable as a designer also problem solving skills in general is something that basically the ux design role entails solving problems so this is what you will be doing as a ux designer solve problems so if you're a natural uh
of solving problems, then this will definitely help you be a good designer. And the last one that I want to say is something that I think you also touched upon, being able to deal with criticism because as a designer, you'll be getting a lot of that. And I'm not talking about toxic criticism necessarily, but your work will be critiqued. Your work will have to be appreciated
updated, amended, iterated, the users will many times not understand your intentions and that can be frustrating or hurt your ego. But that's why working at your
abilities to deal with criticism is super important. And if you have, so just to wrap up this long part of our conversation, if you have some of the qualities or attributes that we just listed, then even one of them can make you a good candidate for becoming a UX designer. So these types of attributes can set you up for success in your future or current design career.
And so I would love to touch on another thing that might set you up for success. And that is the background that you come from.
And I'm curious to hear on FISA. I know that we previously discussed backgrounds in a different episode, but I would love to touch upon it briefly and maybe hear your thoughts around are there any backgrounds that are particularly valuable when transitioning into UX design or do you feel like any background can work very well? Just want to hear your thoughts on this.
Cool. Yeah. I also love this question. I think it's definitely, it would at least solidify some, some answers that I know a lot of people are asking, especially if you already have invested in some industry and some profession and now feeling maybe I should have to start from, from scratch again. So my quick answer is, well,
Well, there are a lot of professions there that have transferable skills that will help you to not start from scratch, that will already kind of help you out to break into the industry much faster, especially if you definitely mention those skills and explain how they could be helpful, at least. Just like you said, Ioana, being self-aware and understanding how those skills could facilitate a design process is
is something super important. And if you kind of help your managers, your design managers to explain upfront how you can be helpful in the team, you're doing a great work for them already. You're helping them out to make decisions if you're a valuable asset or not. So there are a lot of those transferable skills in different professions, in my opinion. And I actually did those notes right now that
at least helped me, well, I did the notes, sort of converged on what I think could be the greatest fits. But just like you said, I think anybody can transition. It's just going to take a little bit more work or more experience to get there. But you can definitely transition from any background.
On my personal subjective opinion, the best transition journey happens when you come from psychological background. Honestly, again, it's just my personal perception from the students I had from, and honestly, like most of my students are coming from different backgrounds. So that's how I make those patterns in my mind. But I saw the best results from people who are moving from psychology backgrounds, and
There are definitely great skills you can transfer from marketing, from development, from graphic design, obviously.
From any other similar design industries, such as interior design, fashion design, and even support and sales, those are all things that always work hand in hand with design. And so you can imagine that 50% of the 50% of your portfolio is already in your pocket. So you can already use those skills most likely. But let me quickly focus on those three top three, four, I guess, three or four things
professions or backgrounds that are found most valuable because the psychology, for example, I think that you already have the mindset, you have pretty much all the soft skills that are needed. You already have the empathy, you know how to conduct the research, you know how to work with insights, you know how to converge insights, how to make decisions. So it's very, very critical and important part of anything we are doing.
But of course, with the psychology background, you still need to understand the design process, how it is different from what you have been applying before, and definitely focus on your visual communication skills. Those would be the parts you need to particularly focus on. A lot of psychology background people I have been working with, they were...
really great at thinking but they definitely need to focus a little bit more on visual representation of their skills marketing skills also those this industry is already we are working under the same umbrella so you probably are already in the same boat almost but and so you kind of know the terminology you know how the industry works you already have a lot in common with what we're doing but it's tricky because you most likely have developed some patterns
you know, on how to look in the market, how to understand the problems, but not from the design perspective. And you will have to work a little bit on changing or updating your habits. It's almost like with similar languages, right? It's confusing. Like me, Ukrainian, I'm learning Czech right now, and I understand so many things, but I cannot say anything in Czech. So that's the same shift should happen in your mind. You know how things work, but you have to constantly work
on adopting this new language and understand how it is different. So you'd have to work a little bit on adjusting. Development, obviously, it's definitely a great skill to have because you know how to communicate already with people. You know how to speak the language of one super core important stakeholder. And that means that if you learn, if you develop those soft skills and hard skills and understand the process, you'll be a super effective player in the team.
and the graphic design obviously you already have the visual representation skill in your portfolio in your pocket but you still need to understand the design thinking you work on your soft skills just like you said you need to be open you need to be able to embrace the feedback and understand that it's it's a good thing not the the bad thing that somebody criticizes your design so there are soft skills that you would have to work on including communication
open-mindedness but again just like I said pretty much anybody would have to work on those skills no matter where you are at your journey in the beginning or already somewhere in the middle I'm pretty sure that anybody can transfer their skills and also develop them farther on and become a better designer it's just a matter of how much time you spend and effort I guess yeah I think that you pretty much touched on the components of my own opinion so I'm just gonna wrap it up I
Yeah, I think that there's no background that can't work as in the UX design profession. So I've seen brilliant designers with medical background and I've seen brilliant designers with law background.
So indeed, the backgrounds that you listed are probably, let's say, the usual suspects for setting you up for success. But at the same time, I just want our listeners to know that there's no restriction as to what background you can come from. I came from a banking background, so I was working in a big bank and had no idea and no education, design education. So but it worked well for me. So, yeah, I don't think there's a
there's a limit as to who is allowed in the design industry. And I think that just like you said, some skills are transferable and you just have to make use of your experience, your particular experience and a set of skills acquired through your background and bring these valuable assets, if you want to bring them to the design process. And this will also give you a
fresh, innovative angle and perspective and probably will make you even more valuable. So just for the last question, before we move on into sharing our top three
ideas for today, I'd say we quickly touch on another brief question that I think can help people understand whether they would be happy as UX designers, whether UX is right for them. I think that anybody asking this question should also consider what they will actually be doing as UX designers. So in order to understand if a particular profession is right for you, then you have to deeply...
explore what that profession entails, what you will be doing on an everyday basis and whether you enjoy that or you think, yeah, you'd like to spend your days doing all sorts of UX activities. So just quickly maybe list some of the most common activities that you are doing
in your design profession and then maybe I add some and then we move into the top ideas. I would like to turn the table this time. How about you start? Because I've been talking a lot in this visit and I really would love to hear your opinion. And then, based on what you said, I also supplement what you have to say. So please start this time. Wow! You didn't cause me unprepared because I have some ideas that I want to start with. I'm sure you have.
So yeah, what you'll be doing as a UX designer?
What I've been doing for the past six years as a UX designer is mostly orbit around users, many times directly and other times not necessarily directly, but in a way that I'm processing the insights that came out from research. So what I'm getting at is that you will probably spend a lot of time around users, especially if you are an end-to-end designer and you don't have a research team or a research person on your team.
so uh yeah you will be talking to users you'll be doing a lot of research this will mean interviews surveys all sorts of different research methods oftentimes you'll mix quantitative and qualitative methods you'll have to be able to extract the insights process the insight so
pretty much everything around research is something that you will be doing as a UX designer. Also, you'll have to be able to, you will be operating with problems. So you'll have to be able to understand what is the problem you're solving based on all the research that you've done. You'll have to articulate that particular problem and circulate it with the team, help everybody understand what is the problem that you're setting out to solve.
That's the same for solutions. So when you will be exploring different solutions as a designer, you have to be able to socialize these solutions, get everybody on board with them, help people understand why a particular solution works best, better than another. So this all comes down to what you said earlier, that you need good communication skills and communication implies also presenting your work, articulating decisions, but also getting buy-in from people on your team.
Another thing that you are doing as a UX designer is something that you mentioned earlier. You're working cross-functionally, so you'll probably be working in teams with developers, with product managers, different stakeholders. So this is something that you have to be prepared for.
Even if you're doing freelancing and you're a Swiss army knife of a designer, you'll still be working with the client. So you still have to be able to work with other people into negotiating and finding the problem to solve and the best solution for it.
You'll probably be doing some facilitation, like workshops, organizing workshops, getting people around at the same table in order to create alignment. And some important other activities will be around prototyping. You'll have to prototype the solutions you come up with, test them with users, gain insights, then iterate based on those insights, then prototype again. So this will be a loop.
of refining the solutions that you come up with. And also then you'll have to handle, let's say, the implementation phase, which doesn't mean that you will implement, you won't write code, hopefully, because I think that designers shouldn't code.
You won't write code, but you will be working closely with developers for them to be able to implement your solution. So you have to be able to prepare the handoff and then offer support throughout the implementation. So while they build your solution, you have to be there by their side and make sure that they got everything right, that you communicated clearly.
your decisions and why you're doing things in another thing in one way or another. And so, and also be able to set the success metrics for your solutions, UX metrics, if you want, and track them, monitor them and continuously recommend recommendations based on how your solution works in real life. So I'd say I'll stop here because then I don't want to list absolutely everything, although somehow I think I already did.
No, this is great. I think it's a great overview. You specifically said that in the beginning you will do research talking to users, collecting qualitative and quantitative insights. You will then need to analyze those. You'll do a lot of analytical job. Then you will have to articulate those. So again, that's a buy-in. This is like when you
Try to articulate your decisions and then prototyping skills, just like you said, and then kind of testing those solutions, understanding what works, what doesn't work, iterating this and so on. So it's this, I think it's fun because you'll do all sorts of stuff, literally all sorts of stuff you can imagine and cannot imagine sometimes. So it's definitely a profession that could allure people by being so versatile and so different and dependent on the project, you'll probably constantly develop your skills.
new specialties, new interesting thoughts that you never thought you will have. So it's very, very interesting profession. Of course, if you want stability and you want something simple, I don't think it's for you. If you're on the normal stable life when you constantly do one thing, it's not for you. I think design industry is an interesting field.
huge, versatile, cross-functional, fun, yet challenging. Yet you have to put a lot of effort and you constantly have to wear different hats. Constantly. Maybe you would expect as a designer coming in, you would expect that you will do a lot of prototypes, but hey, what a surprise, you'll start doing workshops and presentations and talk to people in Slack 24/7.
So sometimes it comes with all sorts of unexpected tasks that you're supposed to do. Even if I will reflect right now at my position, and we have a huge company, I think around 10,000 people working in it, and we have a pretty big design team. We have researchers, we have design directors, managers, we have people who help us with analytics. We have all sorts of designers, yet I'm still wearing, I think, around five hats every time, like starting from
being an active participant and working through, we call it three in a box when you work with different partners, developers, marketing people with sales, maybe people with project managers and product managers and so on. And
So yeah, starting from collecting all different opinions, expertises from different places, from different locations, putting it all together, kind of being on the same page with all the stakeholders. Then of course, talking to the users, understanding them, putting yourself in their shoes, doing any sort of research. If you cannot do the research, you go to researchers and you work hand in hand with them. Then you have to digest all this information, analyze this. Again, put it into some sort of takeaways.
them just like you said buying in and stuff like this so you you still do all those different things and then of course you have your prototype you have to be tactical sometimes you have to be nerdy sometimes consistent uh sync with different departments different maybe sub products if you have different products like we do and and kind of be sure that your solution goes um
in line with the product strategy, with the company strategy, with the company vision. You have to understand high-level vision of the company, your design product vision, and of course you have to be still able to communicate it with different departments. So it's still super, super soft skill-ish at my job. Every day I would spend at least half of the day communicating
collecting information, working with information, and only then maybe I will sneak in some time for design and prototyping and then kind of doing my deliverable design job. But yeah, I can definitely see that it's not, you know, 80 to 20, for example, it's definitely 50 to 50. And sometimes it could be even more communication rather than design. So just like we said in the previous episodes, I think it's not just about hard skills, not about design tools, not about nice design
design deliverables but really all in between and before and and and support yeah so yeah i think it's it's been a lot we talked a lot about different different things here but i do hope that all of those puzzles would come handy for anybody who's yet trying to find their themselves into the profession um so yeah i think we can kind of jump into the last section of this episode and talk about the takeaways
Yes, let's do that. And I can start with my top three findings. So my first one, I'm going to relate my top three findings to the questions that we asked. So for the question, what are the skills or attributes that one can use in their design profession? I'd say that the number one skill from my perspective is self-awareness.
It's the most valuable one because it will have effect on different other qualities like critical thinking or communication skills or empathy and so on. So start with self-awareness, build on that one. If you have that already, if you're good with understanding and observing yourself, then this will probably make you a good UX designer.
On the second question around backgrounds, particular backgrounds that help you become a better designer, I think that I just want to restate that there's no background that is limiting or that won't work. But you
You'll have to find the transferable part of your experience and bring it to the UX design process and to your UX role. So whatever you do, reflect on it, understand how that might go in hand with a UX design process. Let's say, I don't know, you are in sales and you talk a lot with
people and you understood the psychology of persuasion and then use that, for example, to be able to negotiate your solutions with stakeholders in the design process. This is an example. And so the last one that I want to mention, that's regarding to what you will be doing as a UX designer. And it's something that you mentioned. It's an idea that I also want to restate.
the design role is very complex and it's oftentimes super messy and you have to operate with a lot of unknown and a lot of uh findings and you have to grasp really complex systems and make connections and so it's it's not easy and i just want to tell everyone out there who uh
who doesn't like getting their hands dirty with really complicated things that probably if you're looking for simple, clear jobs, then UX design is probably not for you. But if you're able to handle complexity unknown, going back and forth, having to pivot, having to abandon and start over, then yeah, that will probably make you good at being a UX designer. And I'm really excited to hear your top three points.
I was just going to say, you just changed the mind of a lot of people by turning them around and saying like, oh, maybe it's not a good idea to design. But yeah, but it's true. It's true. It's not that easy as it could look like. You know, sometimes when you look into Instagram, UX designers, they are having such a great days, you know, drinking coffee, having fun, talking to users, talking to developers. Everybody's happy in basically you're making this world a better place. Yes. Yes.
But there is always the backside of it. So just keep in mind, there is always work that you have to do. And that's why I think that this profession is getting so demanded and there is always the scarcity of the talent. People are constantly looking for new great people and it's not so easy to find them. So yeah, it looks like a great place to tune in, but yeah, it's not that easy as it could look like from the outside.
keep this in mind. My takeaways, well actually I think that you did a great job deriving key takeaways from each of the questions or topics we have tackled today. I agree with you about the self-awareness, I love that you brought it up, I think it's definitely a great thing. One small thing I guess I would add here and actually it comes from the conversation I had today with my mentee is that
Yes, soft skills, hard skills, all important, but it's also important to work on your confidence and understand that if you, and it's also coming back to your self-awareness point. So if you know what you're good at, if you know what you can bring on the table, if you know your own worth and value, it's also very important to build those things and build that self-confidence. And it's hard.
considering the imposter syndrome topic we have covered previously but um i think it's super important it could be another soft skill that you personally for yourself need to work on and develop and again it comes back to the self-awareness and understanding what are your key values that you can bring on the table how can you help in any team and it's just about matching those um
strong, strong superpowers, if you will, with the company you're applying for. Not always you'll find the company of your dreams from the first try. You can sometimes take, go through five rounds of different company interviews to then find the perfect match, but you need to know what you're worth and you need to constantly keep it in mind and go into any presentation in any, let's say, hiring process interviews or presentation, knowing that you know what you have to bring here. So it's not that, you know, this is the last chance for you to find the job. It's
you know how you can help them. And if it doesn't work, it doesn't help them. That's all right. You move on and find your company. So,
Keeping all those aspects in mind, knowing that you know the process, knowing that you have soft skills, knowing that you have hard skills, but also being confident in knowing what you're good at. Yes, there are things that you can improve. We all have those, but still being sure that, you know, you're a valuable asset. It's important to be confident in yourself. Otherwise, if you cannot, you know, convince me as the potential person who's about to hire you that,
You can rule my ship if you know what you're doing. If you cannot convince yourself, how can you convince us to hire you? So it's important to trying to reflect and trying to be strong about your good things.
This is, yeah, this is extra. It's not the takeaway, but I just wanted to mention this here because I think it's something that many designers are struggling with. My second takeaway still comes back to your self-awareness point and I guess the being open-minded kind of point that I brought also earlier is that it's important and critical for designers, for UX designers, and to work with your ego and super important to...
uh be able to be selfless in some points and sometimes like because you are here to help others i'm not saying that you're servant but you are here to facilitate better communication better products solve problems and so on and so on so it's really not about you it's really all about others this job and so working with your ego and if you know that you have a lot of issues with it and it's normal we all have it and
it's mechanism it's protection mechanism that we have developed over our childhood so don't be harsh on yourself but if you know that you have some issues um just like you want to mention i think maybe it's a good idea to sometimes work with the therapist and work with your ego issues and work them out in order to be a better team member in order to be a better designer and in order to be successful in your career and what else let's just say that this profession is fun
And you'll never be bored here. That would be it from my side. I don't want to talk a lot because I can talk more if you will. Thank you so much. Thank you so much, Anfisa. I think that we were able, we kind of diverged a lot and we touched on a lot.
very broad points of this conversation, but I hope that this will be valuable for our listeners. If anybody else wants to ask us anything around this topic or wants to explore deeper, whether UX design is right for them, then please reach out to us on honest UX talks on Instagram. Yeah. So we will be there to answer your particular needs or, uh,
questions and um yeah i think we can wrap up this conversation yeah thank you so much guys for listening it through we are really we really appreciate your time and your trust um of course we would appreciate your review on the podcast on any podcast medium so yeah if if you feel like feel free to leave your review we would really be grateful for that um but other than that i think that's it for today and we can wrap it up thank you so much everybody and have a great day there
Thank you so much. Bye, everyone. Bye.