#21 Being a beginner in the UX
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Okay, so maybe actually my takeaway here is to not to expect from yourself that in just a few months you'll become a guru professional UX designer who knows that all. I think one thing is to set up the right expectation and at least plan few years to experiment and learn different skills. Hi everyone and welcome to a new episode of Honest UX Talks. I'm

I'm joined by Anfisa, like usually. And so today we're going to discuss a topic that's super important for everybody who is either an aspiring designer or somebody who's currently transitioning into UX design or somebody who has just transitioned successfully but is contemplating the first couple of months or years as a junior designer and feels a bit lost. So today's topic is

is being a beginner in the UX industry and it's quite a broad topic so we'll probably just touch on some parts of it um it's hard to structure such an encompassing conversation but it's a topic that uh you've submitted um in our question stickers and we feel like

let's say people who are in this stage in their careers need the most help. So we are very happy to create content that can guide anyone who feels really particularly lost at this moment, because that's how early days feel. So with that in mind, I'm just going to go ahead and invite Anfisa to tell us a little about how her week went before we move into this topic. So Anfisa, how was your week?

Hello everybody, welcome back on the next episode. We're as always super excited to have you back and I just wanted to add on top of what you said, I think being lost is not just a beginner sort of syndrome but also sometimes it could feel like as a senior even. So it's

Don't feel like you're alone, that you feel feeling that you're lost, you don't know what you're doing. I think it's a very common feeling for most of us. It's just that when you're more like a senior, you feel relaxed because you've been around with that feeling for like, I don't know, 10 years or so. So it's almost normal. It's beginning to be a normal thing. But anyways, yeah, we're going to get to the topics and the tips of how do you kind of handle being a beginner and kind of moving throughout the whole experience.

My week instead was okay-ish, and yesterday I've just got my first vaccine, so congrats to me. I've got Pfizer. We like to joke about the German pronunciation of it, so yes, I got my Pfizer. And I'm feeling a little bit weak. You have a headache. You're feeling like you are dying, right?

And you're trying to keep it up. I was drinking a lot of coffee and eating a lot of sweets today. I was trying to do all possible to keep myself back to life. I think it's actually, it's almost one day past. So it's a bit better now. The first half of the day was really, really bad for me. But yes, yeah.

So I'm sorry in advance in this episode if I'm rumbling around or if you're hearing me saying some strange things or things that doesn't make sense. It's not me, it's Faiza. So it was that small introduction. Yeah, yeah. Before diving into the topic, how was your week, Joanna? Anything you would like to add that we are not aware of? Any new interesting or exciting updates on your side?

Well, not that many apart from the UX bootcamp. I'm not doing much professionally these days. I have some consultancy calls with startups here and there. And I try to talk to people who are contemplating their transition into UX design. But I'm trying to free as much space as possible to spend time with my baby because I feel like this is the moment where she needs me most and I want to be super present.

But yeah, I just can't keep away from social media and I can't keep away from some professional gigs here and there. So I'm balancing things. I think it's pretty good for now. Yeah, I think I'm doing a decent job. And I can totally relate to your vaccine. I'm sorry I didn't do the vaccine German presentation.

pronunciation joke when I did the vaccine because it would have been super funny with my friends. But yeah, I also took the jab and turns out that if you had COVID like I did, the first dose is kind of really bad. And if you didn't, the second dose is worse. So it's interesting. I think I'm not sure because I'm not a doctor, but from what I've read, if you had COVID and your body reacts to recognizing COVID in your first jab, and then you can get worse symptoms.

So, yeah, I felt really awful after the first jab. And after the second one, still bad, but not as bad. So, but I'm, yeah, congrats for taking the vaccine. And I hope that we're all heading towards a free world where we can move freely and we can feel safe wherever we go.

and things are back to normal. I hope so. At least for the summer, please. We deserve it. Yeah, exactly. We deserve it. We're all kind of drained by all this pandemic horror year we've had. So on this happy note, getting back to our topic for today, being a beginner in the UX industry,

Yeah, I'd like to start this conversation by asking from your personal experience even, but also since you're doing the UX course and talking to a lot of people who are transitioning to UX design or are contemplating this transition and through your Instagram page, what do you feel are some of the most common struggles that people have when they start a transition? And maybe even what

what are your main struggles when you transitioned yourself? Okay, so now I need to sort of bring myself back around nine years to the beginning of my career, UX career. And I think we've covered it just a bit when we were talking about imposter syndrome. So the first thing which I can't help but remember immediately is something I've mentioned already, the fact that I couldn't speak English very well. And that's

that's really, really, really, really contributed to the fact that I couldn't express myself and be a good, decent designer that communicates their decisions. So that was one of the biggest struggles I had in the beginning, which of course, you know, as we already discussed, kind of also resulted a lot in the imposter syndrome and questioning myself and asking, who am I even? Why would people trust me? Why would they trust me making the design decisions that would, you know, eventually be the business decisions as well and kind of drive,

the experiences and impact people's life and stuff like that so of course I think like many of us do I was questioning myself I was asking myself why would somebody trust me honestly speaking as we've discussed it I think it's this feeling that just randomly sometimes comes back around and you still sometimes questioning yourself like am I knowledgeable enough do I have what it takes and

What do I even know? And stuff like that. It's just like this constant imposter reminder. Like sometimes it's just back and knocks your door and asks, hey, here I am back again. Ask yourself now again, question yourself. So those are the things that I definitely experienced a lot. But to add more, I guess, to this topic from the experience that I'm seeing right now with my students, another thing is a fear to try more things. It's a fear of not being stupid.

It's a fear of not asking a lot of stupid questions or questions why. It's a fear of looking

maybe not that smart, not that cool yet. You know, like when people feel like, okay, maybe I got it, maybe I did not, I didn't double check, I didn't validate it. So they start building some knowledge or some experience based on assumptions, which is, well, they don't recognize it in the moment, but I must tell that it's usually results really poorly in the work, in the career and making the decision. So it's this fear that affects sometimes people

you and your confidence. And if you're not confident, you're not asking those questions like, why? Why are we doing this? You know, questioning and challenging businesses or business owners or clients or stakeholders or whoever you're working with.

And sort of challenge the status quo, right? And sometimes, yeah, I feel like it's very good to be this four years old baby that questions everything around them and do not look at the world like they need to be cool and smart and almighty already or something, even though they're just getting started with that. Another problem that I've seen around for the beginners is sometimes the other side of this problem, right? Being too confident, too self-confident.

yeah, to self-confidence, I guess, where you feel like you know what you're doing, your art is the best thing in the world, and if you don't understand it, you're stupid, you know the problem, right? Where you think that you have thought about the decision, so now everybody has to accept it, even though you didn't explain it well to others,

and maybe not everybody's on the same page with you, you don't feel like they are worth spending time on explaining this and putting them back on the same page with you. So the other part of the problem where people feel like, oh yeah, I know better, I'm a designer, I'm seen that way, so you should just accept it. So not being able to communicate your decisions

And honestly speaking, it takes a lot of experience to learn to communicate whatever you're doing. Yeah. So those are two or two, not three. Those are three things that came to my mind, top mind. I wanted to hear what were your struggles, but also what are you seeing right now in your students? Is there something you'd like to add on top of that?

Yeah, totally. I mean, I have a lot of experience from my own transition where I feel like for a very long time, I struggled with this information overload.

I mean, and it was not only an information overlock, but a total confusion around what information is trustworthy, what information is right. Is this right? Is this wrong? What the hell is UI? What is UX? Are they different? Are they the same thing? Can I use them interchangeably and all sorts of, so everything felt extremely confusing in the beginning and very hard to navigate.

Because I think that if you don't have, like, let's say, it's absolutely natural that in the early days of your careers, you don't have the critical thinking and the set of criteria, the standards to navigate and filter out the

the good information from the bad information. And so I think that maybe somebody should do it for you. And I think that this is where, uh, let's say micro influencers come in or, uh, especially if you find a mentor, a senior designer that, uh,

would want to be your mentor or a program or anything where you you can get mentorship this is one of the let's say cures for the information overload and for feeling like you can't navigate all the ocean so there's I don't know there is a curse in having so much information available I mean on one hand that's great it's incredible I hope that as much um

as much free information will become available and education will be democratized and people have easy access to good information in their transition efforts. But at the same time, it feels like the more information out there, the harder it is to navigate it. And unfortunately, not all the information is correct or is framed in the right perspective. And so I see many designers that just enter the field and then they have some

wrong conceptions already from the very early days when they are blank slates and only good seeds could be planted. So yeah, I think that the first one would be this information overload. I struggle with it and I see many people on UX goodies and in our bootcamp that also have to cope with this or have to have the challenge of navigating information. Another thing is that

Sometimes I feel like in the early days, you tend to focusing more on the wrong things if you want. I don't know why, because some, I think part of the reason is that design is often viewed as the visual piece.

So it's like when you think design, you think dribble, you think behinds, you think screens. This is what the world around you teaches you to think about when you say design or UX design. So I think that people come into this industry thinking that they need to be talented or they need to, I don't know, to learn the tool. This is the first thing that I should focus on, learning XD or learning Sketch or learning Figma. This is essential because I have to be making screens. And so I think that...

There's a lot of misconception around this. I mean, definitely it's important. So it's important to be able to represent your solutions in a visual way. So it's important unless you want to be a UX researcher where you will spend most of the time just...

producing data and then analyzing and communicating that data. So, yeah, I think it's an important part but many, many people go into the design industry thinking that this is what they should be focusing on when in fact, it's a part of the process and it's not the most essential one if you ask me.

And if I am to think of another thing, of another struggle or confusion that I felt in the beginning, or I found many people, yeah, it's maybe it's, it's a bit of an obsession with the portfolio, if you want is something that I've noticed recently, I think that people like for them, the

the portfolio becomes the end goal and not the knowledge or the practice itself or the skill that they acquire. It's so they're so focused. I think this is what also the information out there teaches them to, to, to deem as important. So building a portfolio because absolutely portfolios are what will get you hired and, and,

you need them in order to be able to go to a job interview and share what you've been working on and learning. And so they're important, but I feel like many people make it like the most essential thing that they strive for. And they forget that it's about learning. It's about doing practice. It's about learning.

experimenting and so on. And so the portfolio is like a byproduct of this work that you put in. It's not what you should be aiming for. It's not the outcome. The outcome is that you are able to perform as a UX designer, that you're able to work as a UX designer. It's not that you have a portfolio.

So yeah, I think these are the top three things. And somehow my next question for this conversation was, what should people be focusing on? But I already touched, I think you also touched a little around this question. So I'm curious whether you think of any other things that people should be focusing on in their early days as designers.

What should they spend most time or even before? So let's say that I'm today, I'm, I don't know, I'm a waiter and I want to transition to UX design and I have no idea where to start and what's important. What would you say to that person? What would you recommend that they do most essentially?

Okay, so this is an interesting question. And actually we know both well, right? That we have a lot of those questions in our DMs. You probably receive it like five times a day at least. We're like, hey, I'm transitioning to UX. Where do I start from? What do I do? Which courses I take? Which tools do I learn? And stuff like this. So this is the question we constantly receive. And I feel it. I get it. And I think it's true that it's very, very broad. And you can start from so many different things. Yeah.

So it would be kind of stupid to say here is exactly what you should do, A, B, C, D, E. It's really, really experimenting a lot for me.

So I guess my advice would be to really try to go broad. You know, this concept of T-shaped person, right? Where there is this broad line and then there is this vertical, which you pick and niche down and become a specialist in something, right? So I think beginning of any journey should start by going broad, experimenting, trying out different things, trying out

vet projects, graphic design projects, UX projects, UI projects, strategy projects, et cetera, interaction design, et cetera. So like go and give yourself a small quick bite-sized project and see really what sticks with you well. Again, as we have covered already a lot in the previous episodes, you've got to reflect, you've got to understand what

fits well with you, with your interests, with your natural talents, but also what are the challenges you want to take on further and kind of learn and master the skills in them. So going broad is something I would recommend everybody who's just starting out. And that means

to try to understand in general the processes, the mindset, the general directions of the design and try and experiment with different projects and maybe different working styles, be it a design agency or client work or product companies or startups, et cetera, et cetera. So don't be afraid to give yourself a chance to kind of experiment

and try different things for at least two, three years until you find what you would like to focus on moving forward. And yes, I know that everybody wants to immediately start, right? And find the career and immediately, you know, going towards the senior sort of product role or something. But I don't think that's fair because our career will be, I don't know, for at least like 10 plus years, if not 20, 30, 40 or whatever years.

So, you know, it's important that you first give it a fair chance, try to experiment, give yourself a chance to be a baby. And as I said, like ask all those stupid questions and see around what really exactly excites you and what you want to dedicate yourself towards. Otherwise you'll kind of pick one thing, one trajectory, and you feel that investment bias and you'll start doing this, even though maybe it's not the best thing for you personally. So

Yeah, I think going broad is what I would recommend generally.

Normally going broad means that you would probably have to look into any sort of educational programs within UX and UI industry. So, you know, understanding different UX processes, the mindset, the double diamond, the design thinking, but then also the UI part, the tactical application, how the UX research affects the UI, how it communicates, how do we turn all the insights into the design decisions? How do we then communicate those design decisions?

So it's a very, very broad industry, as we have discussed already a couple of times. And it doesn't just mean that you have to focus on the process, on the strategy, on the UI part, but also you have to focus on the soft skills, which we have also talked about in the previous episodes. I feel like I'm just have to reference it back to the previous episodes. But soft skills is another very, very important aspect of

of being a designer meaning that you have to constantly communicate your design decisions you have to work on the skills on the presentations on being able to reflect to work with your ego if you feel like you might have some issues with that you have to yeah just learn to be that person that is easy to work with I guess or like collaborative person in any team or any working settings

So there are many, many, many, many things you can do. And that's why it's not correct to expect from yourself that in half a year you'll become a professional UX designer. I think it takes at least a few years to really get to understand how you become this good designer. How do you build those skills? What are all those skills? Because there are so many things you can work on.

I've personally dedicated at least first five years to try to experiment, to try different things, to understand actually what I need to focus on and developing those soft skills and stuff like that. So maybe actually my takeaway here is to not to expect from yourself that in just a few months you'll become a guru, professional UX designer who knows it all.

I think one thing is to set up the right expectation and at least plan a few years to experiment and learn different skills. And there are a lot of them, so there's a lot to be done and it should be exciting. At least it would have been exciting for me if I would have to start all over again. And it's important to not to stress too much about it because, yeah, nobody's expecting from you to be guru in the first two years of your learning journey or your career journey.

I want to continue on the point that you just made that you have to be kind to yourself. So not put too much pressure and not demand too much out of you. So that exactly you are a designer in one year. That's that's probably you can learn a lot of things about design. And probably there are designers out there with five years of experience, no less experience.

than some designers that are just entering the field no so that's also possible but yeah don't put don't stress too much because i mean transitioning and doing the effort of learning a completely new field of learning so many new concepts of putting them into practice this is already a huge effort and it's super demanding from your brain and your energy stack so i

don't put extra pressure on you it's a great point i love it i just want people to to to internalize it as much as possible and i think that another point that continues uh out of this is that there's a lot of anxiety to any transition story so i have never talked with somebody who

shared with me a smooth transition story where they felt great at all times. And they had this very stable journey if you map it in emotional points. And so all the stories that I've heard are basically roller coasters, feeling like, oh my God, I'm on top of the world. I'm actually doing this. I'm transitioning. And then the next second, this is not for me. I'm not going to be a good UX designer. I

have no idea what i'm doing and then the next moment oh my god i'm actually learning to do this i'm actually doing some things and then on and on and on this cycle of feeling um

super excited and feeling scared and demotivated and a lot of anxiety and so on. I would love to meet the person who didn't experience it. And if any of our listeners have never experienced those symptoms, please reach us out. We would like to invite you in here. How was it for you? Because I think it's such a common problem to have in the beginning, like

And honestly speaking, it will continue happening or being a problem for a few years, if not for tens of years. It's so, so common. So yeah, it's super cool that you mentioned it.

Yeah. And I think that it's absolutely natural because whatever new thing we do, it's like there's a lot of unknown to it. And unknown is basically something that causes people anxiety. So not knowing what you will be doing, not knowing what you're getting yourself into, not knowing whether you'll be good at it, whether you like it and so on. And so operating with unknown is something that

can trigger anxiety, but at the same time, it's something that the design role is actually all about. So you start with a problem and you know nothing about it and you have to uncover things. And so you're basically, yeah, dealing with unknown in your design role every day. So it's, it's something that you need to be, get accustomed to and be able to control and, uh,

used to your own advantage so in order to ease out the anxiety i think something that's important is um i've said it again and again and maybe i'm just being redundant and repetitive but it's like the mentoring relationship is something that can help you at least figure out um

what are your known unknowns? So it helps you increase the known unknowns that you have. So basically know what you have to be learning in order to decrease the level of unknown, what you need to be focusing on, what you need to be doing, what subjects are

relevant for your goals and your personality and what you want to be doing as a UX designer. So I think that if there's one thing that I would say people should focus on to answer the question is finding a mentor. And you can do that. Now there are a lot of platforms that offer this for free. And I think that people, senior designers are extremely open to mentoring young designers. You maybe sometimes just have to reach out on them on

LinkedIn or somewhere and maybe find someone who's in an industry that you aspire to work in or who is in a position that you aspire to work in. Or let's say you want to have a startup career, find someone that's working in a startup. And so find someone who makes sense with your broader plans and reach out to that person. And it may be that the first person says no, and then the second person says no, but at some point, somebody will definitely want to build this relationship with you. And this is the number one most valuable thing that you can

can do in your early days because this will help you, like I said, figure out which are the known, figure out your known unknowns and also help you figure out what makes sense for you as next steps and build a learning journey. And yeah, that's super valuable. So this is what I wanted to make sure I mentioned again, although I always make this point around mentorship. And so, yeah, this leads me to my next question.

Which is actually also something we touched upon already. So my next question was, what should we, what should the junior designer be learning? And you also, you already mentioned some things. So presentation skills are essential. So communication skills in general are super important. This is actually, let's say, I don't know, 30% of the design job, being able to communicate

research findings to communicate and articulate your decisions and showcase solutions to people in a way that they understand it and so yeah this is this is pretty much I think over 30 percent of our job as a designer but what else what else should junior designers learn in their early days okay so first of all we mentioned it already right try to go broad and try different things um

I would say that you need to try to understand, like if I try to be super specific, it's all about start by you understanding UX process, all the user search, all the user-centered design practices, design thinking mindset, design thinking processes, workshop, et cetera. Just try to understand those at least on the conceptual level first. You'll get a chance further in your career to experiment and to practice and to figure it out and

to become better at it, but first just try to sort of expand on those old concepts and try to understand really what it takes to be a designer, what are the things we're doing. Introduce yourself to this world, first of all. Maybe start from theory, just like it usually happens, right? So introduce yourself to the UX world, to the processes, practices, methods, tools, everything we're using. You don't need to become instantly the master of those. You just have to, again, start broad,

Build the fundamentals, build them strongly, understand the concepts, understand the language, understand what we're talking about when we are living in this design bubble, doing the design things, right? Start broad. And by that, I mean, you can probably take some courses or just go and start a bootcamp program with the team or mentors or weekly check-ins or find a mentoring program. So whatever fits best for your educational needs, start there, start from theory.

Then, of course, and I'll probably repeat this over and over again, but you do have to practice. That means that you don't instantly have to practice everything that you just learned. But think about the strategic part of your portfolio. So what maybe again, this is something you can discuss with your mentor or anybody who is in the industry who could help you out figuring out your portfolio.

your best direction for you, but maybe start by understanding what projects you want to have in your portfolio, because this is your strategic investment and the projects you're doing today will probably attract similar projects, similar projects, clients or companies. So think about the project you want to work on. It could be the project you're really interested in or passionate about. Could be the industry you want to be at, at some point. So like try to figure out the projects you want to have in your portfolio. Just think, I think,

it's important to start by practicing but not expecting too much from from yourself and to just give it a fair chance to practice get a hand of it get a feeling get an understanding why you're doing it question everything you're doing and just figuring it out on your own way learning on your own way you know we all do things in different ways even though in the book it's written like

like that, crystal clear, do ABC. But when you are doing this, you're processing information in different ways. So you definitely have to practice it on your own, figuring out what works best for you.

And after you've practiced, you definitely need to get some feedback. So that's when the puzzle that Ioana was mentioning, the mentoring part of it, comes along very handy. So you probably need a mentor or anybody who could help you, support you, give you a fair feedback, maybe direct you if you're feeling like stuck or something. And of course, the last component we're always talking about is the reflection. So what I've learned...

what I'm interested in, what would I do better next time? So sort of the retrospective part of it and just really understanding what do I want to do, what I want to maybe do better next time, what do I want to learn next time and stuff like that.

Four aspects we always mention, but it's still always important to remind yourself about this. And every time you just start from all this big, hot, crazy mess in front of you, don't be worried. Take one program. Don't take...

I don't know, 15 programs because you'll overwhelm yourself just like Ioana mentioned in the beginning. Take one, maximum two programs and try to just dip yourself into those programs. Take a course, take a bootcamp, introduce yourself to the world and the theory of your design, but then slowly, slowly, slowly, don't expect too much from yourself, but try to practice one project at a time and then get a feedback and then reflect on what you've learned and what you would do next time better.

So yeah, that was a recap of everything we're usually talking about. But I wonder if you have anything to add or correct me on from your perspective.

Well, I think that you pretty much shared like, let's say the ideal high level recipe. Of course, everybody has to take this and adapt it to their own context, obviously, to their own goals, to their personality, to their background, to everything. And I think this is the value of a mentor, which I feel like I'm a crazy woman by now. Repeating that mentorship is really important.

And yeah, I think that if I were to name one thing that is essential in the early days as a designer is to, like you said, understand the process. So, I mean, there's no one right process, but there is a process that you should be figuring out. So the idea of uncovering,

understanding the problem space that you're solving the challenge, the design challenge in, and then moving into exploring solutions and how do you choose one solution over the other. So, and then prototyping, testing, iterating, implementing and observing. So these things that basically are part of mostly...

any design process are things that you should be accustomed with and understand that design is not just about jumping into solutions and sketching out the prettiest screens that you can, but it's a whole process and you should get accustomed to its high level phases, even if in real life you'll adapt them and adjust them from project to project. So this is one thing, understanding the process. And even I'd say even more importantly is understanding the purpose of design. So I think that this is pretty hard to grasp

in the early days because you feel like the purpose is like building a nice feature or I don't know, doing a product that looks good or is. But in the end, you really have to understand at all points in your process and in your journey, in your learning journey, why am I doing this with any particular design? So why?

start with why like Simon Sinek says or it's something that designers know that it's important figuring out the why but I just want to make sure that I get this point across so what's essential is that you understand

the value of design so you understand why you're why you're doing this why you are talking to users why is it important to to explore different solutions and not go to the most obvious solution why why are why these things matter and in the end i think one of the potential reasons to this question is that it can actually make a difference in people's lives which is a huge responsibility but it's also extremely exciting and so i think that people should uh

Always keep in mind, always be mindful and reflective, like you said, in their learning journeys. It's super important to understand why you are doing things and have intent behind anything you're doing. So be intentional. It's also the fact that you're asking why helps you to build this another very essential critical skill, soft skill for the designer, which is called...

Also, ironically, critical thinking, right? Because the designers, when we are presenting decisions, it's not that we felt so, or this is my mood, so here is the design. So we usually have to critically analyze our decisions, right? We have to develop

that understanding why we have to always go through many, many potential solutions and figure out what's the best one, what's the most working one. That means having the critical thinking. So right now, as you are going through your educational journey, and if you're applying some methods, typical design methods, you constantly have to

ask yourself why and that way you also develop this critical thinking soft skill where you're analyzing when you're questioning when you're figuring out if that's the right thing for us to do if that's the right way for us to spend our time you know so yeah that's also another critical soft skill which I just wanted to make sure we covered and you perfectly covered it also in the beginning so

Yeah, I'm not sure if we even talked about critical thinking, but I actually think it's super, super, super important. Sometimes when you are presenting your work, even in the portfolio review during the hiring process, it's usually what a lot of people or design managers are looking for to really think, to understand how you think. And if you're able to make those critical decisions and think through the design decision. So if you're not able to answer why you do those personas or I don't know, those customer journeys,

it's gonna make you look like you're not even sure what you're doing so it's something you have to really work on and work through as a part of your mindset as a designer i just want to say that critical thinking is actually my favorite skill to be building so i would love it if we would

have an episode discussing only critical thinking and why it's essential and how important it is, not only as a designer, but also as a life skill and helping you. Yeah, but most more importantly, helping you succeed in your career. So yeah, great point. And I think that we're getting closer to the end of this episode. So we discussed a lot of things and many of them high level. We also went into some important details. So for me, it already feels a bit

It's harder than usual to pick my top three insights for this episode, but let's try to do that quickly before we wrap up. So what would be your top three insights from this conversation? Okay, I'll try to be super quick. Just again, to be, I guess, concise and have

Top most important takeaways from this conversation. But first would be for me personally is to not expect too much from yourself in the beginning of your career. Don't expect that you'll become a guru in, I don't know, half a year. So you have to give yourself a fair chance to go broad, experiment, figure it out.

get a feedback but also build that confidence as you go you don't have to expect from yourself to become a super advanced experienced senior designer just a matter of few years so please please please please be good to yourself be kind to yourself the second point the second takeaways from myself um or i guess from our conversation would be to let me think um well probably i'll again

refer back to just what we just covered the critical thinking to always try to assess everything you're doing talk to yourself introspectively but also try to think through maybe even i don't know when you're doing the presentation maybe do the test presentation in front of somebody to really ask all those questions why and when you're reasoning your decisions that helps you a lot to reflect and really polish the designs you're doing so maybe the fact that yeah the critical thinking and

And the presentation skill is those two things I'd like to suggest anybody who's just getting started to be a priority. And yeah, just in general, don't underestimate the value of the education, the value of the theory, of the practice, and as Ioana loved to mention, the mentorship in your educational process. So those are the things that you still definitely have to go through.

And you cannot avoid those, even though I know we all want to jump directly to be in the professionals and, you know, learn as we go. Unfortunately, we still need theory to make sure we're not wasting time. Yeah, these are my takeaways. What are yours?

I'd say that the first one I want to mention is embracing your anxiety and embracing the unknown. And yeah, it aligns with not putting a lot of pressure on yourself. But I want to focus on the part that it's absolutely natural that you feel like a roller coaster of emotions while you're transitioning and feel excitement in one moment and

And then in the next moment, feel despair. It's absolutely natural because you're actually changing your life and you're making a career switch, which is something very big. And it's natural that it triggers all sorts of emotions. So if right now you're in one of the places, either transitioning to UX design, contemplating this transition or already have succeeded it, but still feel lost.

I feel you. It's totally normal. Everybody thinks, I think everybody can relate to this. And so, yeah, just embrace the unknown and embrace uncertainty and prepare for having to deal with it a lot in your design career. So this is one point.

The other point I'm trying to make is that I want to remake is that you shouldn't focus that much right now on deliverables or on outputs like the portfolio or this particular case study. So it should be like a byproduct of your learning journey. It shouldn't be the main focus. It's important that you have them. It's important that you are intentional about them. So like we mentioned earlier,

um add case studies or do projects that align with the type of company that you would want to work in with the type of industry that you would want to work and so be be mindful around the projects you choose but don't choose them and don't focus on just generating case studies but focus on actually maximizing your learning your learning and experiencing experimenting as much as possible

So I think these are the most important things that you could be doing in your early days. And I think that I was a bit afraid of this episode that we are tackling something that's way too broad, that encompasses so many things, and we couldn't get any actionable points across because everything will feel so abstract. But in the end, I feel like we have so many tangible points that we've made, and I think

I think we did a great job with this episode. I think it actually was a great recap of most, like it's our 20th episode, if I'm not mistaken, or maybe 21st, whatever. So it's actually a great recap of most of the things we were covering in depth in the previous episodes. And this one is like one big umbrella encompassing all of those key important lessons we have done. And maybe moving forward,

to the 20 plus episodes we'll start talking more in depth about some particular parts of it like like we have started today the critical thinking or maybe presentation skill etc etc so if you have specific questions or challenges your experience and right now that would be really really great if you could submit this and we can discuss it more in depth discuss the story discuss what we would do maybe in different situations so we would really love to start talking more in depth

But I think, yeah, this episode was a great, great recap of everything we've learned and discussed so far for especially the beginner designer who's just entering the profession. Yeah, it feels like a celebration. Like we're drawing a line and recapping everything. That's a great point. And I think that, you know what, even this conversation we're having right now, it's a great example of being reflective. So we just recorded an episode and now we're reflecting on it and how it went and

how it makes sense in the bigger picture. So this is exactly what we're actually talking about when we're saying that you should be intentful and intentional and reflect and mindful of everything you do. So stop everything you do. Anytime you do something, just stop and reflect as it will bring a lot of value and it will help you understand why you're doing what you're doing and be able to articulate it. So

Thank you to everybody who joined. Follow us on Instagram @honestuxtalks. Honestly, any review would also help a lot because we're doing this to help and reach as many people as possible. So helping us with that would be in the world. And not sure if you want to add anything, Anfisa? I'm just showing the heart sign right now. You cannot see this, but you can hear there is a heart sign. Can you hear it?

Anyways, yes, please. We would really, really, really appreciate any support, especially if you're sharing it in social media or especially if you're submitting the topic that helps us a lot to shape the content and hopefully provide more value. So don't be afraid. Don't hesitate to reach us out. We're definitely open to talk and hear from you.

So yeah, that's it from today's episode. And thank you so much for tuning in. Hope you're having a great time of the day. And we will hopefully see you on the next one. Bye, everyone. And thank you again for joining. Thank you, Anfisa. Bye.