#81 Navigating UX career as a non-native English speaker
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I would definitely recommend you to learn English with better ways of articulating your thoughts. Comes also better opportunities, expanding the markets. You will be feeling much more confident if the hard situation comes in and you have to explain it and you have to understand both point of views and then reframe it into some interesting like conflict resolution. You do have to have a good English for that.

Hello UX designers and welcome to a new episode of Honest UX Talks. As always, I'm joined by Anfisa and today we are going to be discussing about the challenges and obstacles that one might face when navigating a career in UX design as a non-native English speaker.

We're going to be talking about our own experience as non-native English speakers. Is it even important to master English if you're going into a UX design career? How do you build a UX vocabulary in a foreign language? What did we do to improve English skills as a UX designer? And with that, I'm going to go ahead and do our regular intro. How was your past week, Anfi?

Hello everybody and welcome on the next episode. Always happy to talk to you, Ioana, and to share our stories, I guess, with the audience. I'm doing great. I announced last week I'm on maternity leave. So at the moment I'm only working on one project,

which is the masterclass about the strategy and finding UX jobs. I guess something along the lines of what we are talking here as well with this podcast. But yeah, the whole masterclass is going really good. I'm kind of finding a lot of joy in doing this.

I feel like it's really great that as soon as I finished my full-time job and wrapped everything and like I finished the work on Friday and Monday I started the masterclass and I feel so great that I still I did it. I was really worried that maybe I'll not have enough energy. Maybe I will feel bad because I'm at the end of the eighth month of the pregnancy. I felt like maybe, you know, what if I don't have air to breathe? If I feel not energized, maybe I'll not pull it off.

I definitely had a lot of worries, but now I'm feeling so great that I actually decided to take this risk and still go for it, simply because it's literally what I was missing a lot in the last almost one year. I was really, really focused on my full-time job. I was so wrapped up with the project. I really didn't have much time and energy to work on like side projects, on the content, I don't know, YouTube videos, on Instagram. And so like right now, as I'm only creating content and

Every day, I spend like eight hours working on the slides for the next class, iterating on them, adding more information, more tactics, adding more mindset, wisdom, and stuff like that. It just gives me a huge joy. And the best part about it is that...

The moment you present it on the live class, you instantly get the feedback and you instantly see the reaction, if it makes sense, if it doesn't, and if people ask questions and if they say it was useful. So the whole loop of creating the content and the next day presenting it and the next moment getting the feedback is what I've been missing a lot. I did mention before that my first teaching gig was also with live courses, but it was offline in real life. And this whole instant feedback

is really what I've been missing as I was working more like on the self-paced courses in the last few years. So yeah, I'm really, really in a good mood right now because I just feel like it's the right thing for me to do. I'm really happy I did it. And even though it's like short course, so today's the beginning of the second week and we still have two more weeks to go. But yeah, I'm just really excited to finish it, to continue the content. I feel like a lot of people are telling me great feedback. So yeah, thinking that I did the right thing.

But other than that, all good. Enjoying the maternity leave. Definitely having a bit more fresh air and time for myself and not to run anywhere with the work. So it's probably a really good place to be at. How about you? How was your last week? My last week? You'd think I'd have time to think about how my past week was while you were talking, but I didn't really reflect on it. So let me just remind myself what I've done the past week.

As our listeners know, I'm very, very immersed in my design project at UiPath working on Clipboard AI. Yeah, I'm doing a lot of awesome things. I think I said it in the past episode as well, but I just want to repeat it. I feel like for the first time in my life, I'm actually doing product the right way. Like we've interviewed 300 people. It's absolutely incredible the amount of data that we were able to elicit in a not such a

big team. We have one researcher, we were two designers. Now I'm going to be the only designer on this project, one product manager. So it's a small team, but we managed to create so many insights. And yeah, I feel like we're really making data informed decisions, not data driven. I like that distinction. We're doing a lot of amazing things and I can't wait for this product to be more robust. Right now it's still an infant product.

product, let's say we've launched it, it's in private preview, but there are still a lot of things to improve. And since it's using AI, we're dealing with all the classic AI challenges everybody's discussing by now, like the fact that it's probabilistic. So you're designing for scenarios in which you're not sure what's going to happen. You're not sure what results AI will return. So how do you design for that and stuff like that?

It's a pretty exciting time for me. On the side, of course, I'm moving ahead with all my UX Goodies stuff. I'm doing more mentoring these days. So I think this is something where I find a lot of satisfaction in. And yeah, just spending more time talking with designers. I've been in contact with my design friends at

Meta, for example, where we've had chats because last week was pretty tough for them. And luckily, none of my friends were touched by the layoffs. But I'm really curious about how people are experiencing these things within a company that's struggling with that. Even if you're not affected, how does it

affect you. Just thinking about nice things and enjoying my design work is essentially what I've been doing for the past week. So with that, let's jump into UX career stuff. Like, for example, is English an important part of a UX design career? Can you have a career in UX design without being very good at English? What are your thoughts on that? As we're talking in English, good question to start from, definitely.

I mean, hard to say no, to be honest. For sure, you can survive without English if you're focusing on the local market, if you are working on a very local product. For example, I'm right now living in Czech Republic. And if I were to work in the Czech company, focusing only on the Czech scene, no need for translation, et cetera, et cetera, collaboration with other companies, et cetera. Or I mean, no need to collaborate with designers from other countries. Then yes, of course, I think it's quite possible.

But I think it's really a question to you as a designer on the opportunities and your ambitions on what you want to target. Because if you are doing a great job as a designer, I think it is A, all the resources are in English. It's a universal IT, almost standard language. Everybody speaks. Of course, we have our proof of information because we speak

IT English and like design English was definitely some words that are not as often used for like everyday casual life. But at the same time, I think even in the native languages, we cannot translate a lot of terms that are very commonly used in UX design. So you want it or not, they just enter our life. For example, I find myself speaking mixed languages when I start speaking Ukrainian. Most of

the words I would say, like 50% of the words from the industry will be in English. And so I feel like it's almost inevitable. It's a part of everything that we do. And if you want to grow, if you want to read resources, books, most of the good information, it comes in English. The second component of it, of course, is that now it's a post-COVID period.

and a lot of the jobs are becoming more and more remote. And with that, we're opening more and more opportunities, working remotely, working for companies in different markets. And that, of course, provides better opportunities in terms of the income, in terms of the products we can access, in terms of just like the interests and areas for growth. And so if in your local community, the UX maturity is not very high or

maybe income is not great, then you can always, by improving your skill, access other markets where maybe the opportunities are better. And for that, you definitely need English. Like in my company, it's a Czech company, but we all speak English and we're hiring people from all around the world.

starting from California to the New Zealand. We're in my 20 people team, having people literally from all possible European countries, US, Australia. So it's the universal language. And if you want to target higher, want to have better opportunities, better payment, better access to education, I think it's a must. So it's really a question to yourself how ambitious you are with your career. What about your point of view, Ioana? I feel that I'm pretty aligned with everything you just shared.

I do believe that English will definitely open a whole world of doors. For me, this was the case. It still is. Like you were saying, funny enough, we're doing this podcast in English. And by talking in English, we're opening up our experience and our design thoughts,

to the entire world in a way. So that's amazing. And it's something that will definitely give you a lot of potential. Now, I feel that you can also succeed in your local market. So I know a lot of people who are doing UX design in their local market, in their local language for a company where they're employed in their local language.

I wouldn't connect the decision of pursuing a UX design career with the need for learning English. So you can get started in UX design without being a very good English speaker or very good at understanding or able to master complex conversations in English. So you can definitely just build something for yourself, find a path in your local environment.

There's no conditioning. I don't see it as a dependence, but it definitely limits your potential in terms of the jobs you can target. Like you were saying, I also work in a company that was built in Romania and then it scaled globally. So now we work with people from all over the world, from India to Seattle to New York. So it's just people from all over the world, even Japan.

So for me, it's essential now to be able to collaborate, even if I'm working for a local company. Just in your example, it's the same thing. So even if you get hired locally, it will help you in collaboration and yeah, just potential, like you can do much more. So I would say it's very important, but it's not critical. This is my conclusion. You would be able to make it without it, but it's definitely, definitely a very, very strong advantage.

So how was your life early on?

not a native English speaker. I'm even curious to explore some angles maybe of creating content for people like a non-native content and design. How were the early days? Because now, I mean, we have a lot of experience. We've been working in international companies. We've been doing a lot of content in English. I speak English every day. So I think I'm past the stress, the initial stress. But do you remember those moments like when you were starting out? How did that feel? It was definitely embarrassing.

I think it's an inevitable step in every journey for non-native English speakers. Look, first of all, I think it's a very common question and problem for a lot of people, not just us, me and you, and not just us had to go through it. But like every other day I would receive a question like, oh, everything is in English. How would I improve it? There is no simple path. I think we all go through the same path of learning.

kind of learning, understanding, but not able to speak. And then as we start speaking, we can't quite explain ourselves or our thoughts are not as well put and not as well articulated as we wish it could be. And we all kind of go through hard experience of almost like, I want a screen, nobody understands it and stuff like that. So for sure, it's a journey. It never comes

instantly you'd have to learn and master it for years and years and years. I mean, maybe you're super smart and you can in like two years become advanced and almost feel like native, but it wasn't the case for me. My personal story is that though at school we did have like accent on English, so I had a bit more hours learning English. But I mean, I'm from a small Ukrainian city,

in the central western parts of Ukraine. And the education there is not fantastic, let me just put it that way. And so the English we had was very basic still, even though we had like five, six classes per week, which was more than usual for my city. But the teacher was not speaking well in English. It was good because we could learn the, let's say, vocabulary. Like every day we would have to learn 20 new words or something like that at

I remember. But, you know, it still was not practicing. It still felt like I understand a lot of things. I can watch movies if I want. I will not understand. I don't know. Maybe I'll understand 60%. But then when it comes to traveling, let's say I travel around and then I cannot say a word. I feel like this block, absolutely mentally blocked. And I cannot find a word that maybe I need just to ask, like, how do I find the library? You know?

Or like, where is the nice local restaurant? I just can't ask those questions. I've been there and I still feel like super embarrassed. I mean, I started traveling so that was helping just a little bit. For sure, I felt like a stupid Ukrainian girl that speaks no English. Oh my God. All that stuff. Because people around me who are traveling in Europe were so advanced. Like people from, I don't know, Netherlands, Sweden, Germany. They all had like amazing English skills.

And I was supposed to know English because I was studying in an English school. But nope, I don't know anything, it felt like. Traveling helped a bit to at least made me realize the problem that I cannot speak and I have this mental barrier and I just have to find a way to overcome it.

And then I also went into work and travel. Many people in Europe would know what it is. It's like the summer program when you go to US for three or four months. You work on the local summer jobs. And yeah, apparently you speak English all the time. And that didn't help for some reason. Maybe I just had to live with people in like US environment. But I was living in like a local house with people from my country. And so I returned from work and travel not feeling much confident.

So all the effort I was doing was moving me just a very little bit. And what really, really helped was me moving to Estonia to start a master's degree. And it was in English and it was about design. And we had all the classes in English and it was all about design, design thinking, user-centered design, research, business, all that stuff. And the first year, it was a suffering, right?

Because all around me, there were people from Australia, UK, Germany, Sweden, everybody fantastic English. I'm the only one who nobody seemed to understand. I think when we talked about imposter syndrome, I did brought up one story where I was like trying to collaborate with this Estonian guy. He looks at me very lost. And then

And he turns around and looks at the teacher and says, like, I don't know what to do. And the teacher says, like, ha ha ha, lost in translation. The guy was really, like, stuck because he didn't understand me. And I struggled to explain what I'm trying to say. It was very embarrassing. And I think my teachers were also conditioned to...

not think of me seriously because I couldn't explain myself. So it was like me being very powerless. But slowly, slowly, slowly through a lot of embarrassing moments, through a lot of situations when I couldn't explain what I'm trying to say, it was improving for sure. It just took me a while. Eventually, it took like three years in that master degree.

program. So by the end of three years, I felt much better. I felt so much more confident. I could present. I could make a case. I could articulate my thoughts. But it just took a while and a lot of moments when I felt like I'm so stupid. I think what really helped me, and it's like a stupid story, but it's not even a story. While you're a student and you go party and you kind of go and drink beer, it helped me because, you know, when you drink a little bit,

it makes you tipsy and you're not so worried anymore. So my mental barrier was like falling down, even though I couldn't understand everybody because, you know, it's just people from, I think, like Australia or I think it was maybe New Zealand, right?

I really could understand them. It took me a while also to adjust to different accents, but it just helped me to not be afraid of speaking like a stupid person, you know, like making all those mistakes, overcoming them. And then in introspection, realizing that, oh, I did all those stupid mistakes and

So yeah, I guess my story is not anything special. It was just learning experience, learning to speak, learning to understand, learning to adjust, learning to work with my barriers. After three years of living abroad, like for example, I'm traveling then with another group of people and somebody is trying to explain something in English and I can actually jump in and say, oh, you're trying to say this. That was the moment when I realized that I'm really improving.

But it just had to become this everyday habit of talking, just like you said, right? Every day we're using English at work.

at content creation and practice, practice, practice. When it comes to content creation, I think it was also very helpful to start writing in English. I started writing in 2016, first Medium, then on Instagram. When I look at the posts I did back then, I definitely see a huge amount of mistakes. But it's again, it's a practice. You keep writing and you keep improving, you iterate, you look back, you realize, oh my God, I did all those stupid mistakes. Today, when you speak or when you write, you can actually articulate

And I think the biggest praise I ever received was when I was working for an American company, my first American company in 2019. And my manager from US came to Prague and he was like, oh, Anfisa is so articulated. She's so well-spoken. And I was like, what? What?

Oh my God, my American manager is telling me that when like maybe like 10 years before I was living in US and I could not understand a word from my American managers. And now the American manager is telling me that I'm well-spoken. So I mean, it's 10 years progress, but it made me feel like finally I achieved something. But it's not an easy journey. I don't want anybody to expect it to be instant and like two years, you're going to be great. Sorry, but it will take a lot of practice.

What do you think, Ioana? How was your journey? Your English is amazing, by the way. I would be this American manager who says that. You're like, wow. Thank you so much. I keep getting this compliment you just gave me. It's funny that when I listen to myself, I really feel it's absolutely horrible.

Like in my head or when I talk to you, I feel like, hmm, I kind of have this. I got it. And then I listen to what I'm talking and it's just horrendous. Like it's bad. It's not where it should be. And it's funny that I went to New York a couple of years ago and I spent three weeks there. And after one week, I'm very adjustable and I...

pick up accents and I improve very quickly if I'm in the right setups. My English was better than ever after one, two weeks spending there. And then I met with someone who was a native New Yorker and they immediately said, oh my God, your accent is so funny. I was like,

What accent? Because other people told me that you really can't sense it. It's not the classic Eastern European tough, rough accent, but like people can sense it. Like native English speakers can definitely sense it. So yeah, but I've had people write to me like,

How is your English so good? What are you doing? Where are you practicing? Any tips, tricks? So apparently, allegedly, my English is okay. But I can tell you that I hate it when I hear it. So if anyone else is in the same circumstance, I think it's just a normal human feeling that I don't like my voice when I listen to myself. And I don't I don't like my English either.

My story is not as spectacular as yours because I wasn't so brave as to go for work from travel, USA, whatever, just move around Europe or other countries to experiment stuff. I've been very stable and not leaving Bucharest. I did travel a lot, but I feel that traveling will only help you if you spend more time there. So if I went somewhere for one week, I didn't feel like it helped me improve on my accent, like being in London, let's say.

And so I didn't have that experience. But it's true that when I was very, very young,

young, like kindergarten, I think, or like very early in school, the teachers, my parents, I don't know, like my entire environment kept telling me that your greatest talent is English. Like it seems that it's the thing you're best at. So I think I integrated that feedback. And I was like, you know what, this is what I'm going to be focusing on because I think I'm pretty good at it. And so I did improve on my English constantly over the years in school. And this

actually prevented me from learning other languages. So most of my friends in school, they learned like two languages. Most often it was English and

and French in Romania. But I mean, I sort of understand French, but I can't speak one word. I mean, maybe if I'm drunk or something, but I can't typically have a conversation in French. But other people kind of developed more talents and I was very focused on English because that's what I was good at. And eventually in my, I think I was in the 10th grade or 11th grade and I went to the Olympics for English. And so I felt like this is my gift. Yeah.

And then I went out in the world, right? So then you just go out and you realize that you don't have to speak perfect English. Although, to our point earlier, I do feel that native English speakers have a perceived advantage. Like there's an unconscious bias that tells us that if someone is very articulate just because they master the language better, they know what they're doing or they're more competent or...

or they're better at design because they can speak all these words so nicely and they sound great. And so I realized that native English speakers do have an advantage because they sound smarter just because they speak good English. But then also I realized as I grew up that it's not very important that I have this impressive, sophisticated, robust vocabulary where I could like

pull up different words that nobody ever heard about. So it's more important that you get your points across. And I feel that you can get your point across even with the basic level of English. So I know people who aren't good English speakers, they speak just, I don't know, very limited, but they can communicate. So I realized that I'm investing a lot of time into something that's probably not worth it. I mean, I was just improving very sensibly. And so I started learning other things. Luckily, it was UX design. Yeah.

But my learning efforts for English did help eventually. My story isn't spectacular. I just learned a lot of English in school. You're just smart. That's it. I sound smart.

We don't know the truth. Okay. I think we've touched upon how English was for us and if it's important. And I would tie it deeper into how English can enable you to have a better design vocabulary. And can you have a good, strong design vocabulary without good English skills? Do you even need a UX vocabulary? What's your opinion around building this skill?

I mean, to be honest, to your point from your story, I would actually say you're right. You can get your points across, but it's still like this bias, my subjective opinion is still a real thing. I do feel like my career started progressing faster when I started speaking better simply because we speak so much in design. We constantly have to sit in the meetings, present, make a compelling storytelling. And I think that's why I've heard so many times good designer is good UX writer, good

You have to write a lot. You have to explain your thoughts in a compelling way, be concise, speak stories and stuff like that. And so as soon as I started creating content, it actually definitely helped me become a better designer. And as well, that reflected in the jobs opportunities, that reflected in the income and all of that.

So I would still, my perspective is that good English could be slightly correlated to your success. But it's still a truth what Ioanna said. Like you can definitely start locally. You can slowly improve it. And now we're talking about design vocabulary, right? I think for me, vocabulary was when I started reading more and more.

particularly when I started reading Medium and articles and like different point of views from different designers. I mean, I still studied design. So for me, it was like part of the process. My master's degree was in user-centered design. I had classes. I had all those buzzwords already integrated in my study life. So I had to write essays.

So design vocabulary came together with studying English, with building the confidence in talking in English. However, I think the truth like UX vocabulary and all those tech words, IT and design related terms were only on the rise maybe the last 10 years.

And to me, it was tied to the medium for some reason. I was really hard on reading medium every day. I would read like, I don't know, five, 10 articles. I really like for some reason reading different people perspectives and experiences. There were a couple of really big writers on UX content, for example, Nick Babbage or Luke Wroblewski and other people like that. And I just got addicted. I was constantly reading their content and that helped me a lot to build those patterns.

and then started using those patterns. And also, luckily, at that time, I was actually teaching design in the offline courses. So I also had an opportunity to use those words, use this vocabulary every single day. And then it kind of integrated or it was incurved in my vocabulary. And as you start working with IT circles, as...

with the freelancing, with the companies. It just becomes something that you can't help but hear every single day. So you slowly, slowly, slowly make it a part of your vocabulary as well. How about you? How did you build your vocabulary in design? It's funny that when I started out in UX design, I would search on Google UX vocabulary, like UX terms. Just go over what is a card sorting? What is A-B testing? What is a wireframe? What does it mean? This and that. And I read the

definitions and I felt like it's overwhelming because there are so many terms, so many things. And when you go into interface design, like what is a, let's say toast? What are we talking about? Snack bars? What are those? Like what's a hamburger menu? What are all these things?

So it really felt like there's a huge world there that I'm never going to be able to navigate or understand or what the hell do all these things mean? So I really started the wrong way in a way because I started reading them like you would essentially just open a dictionary from your library and go through the dictionary trying to learn words. That's not how you learn words.

You learn words by putting them in context, listening to them in context, having conversations, asking questions. Hey, you just used the word wireframe. What is that? What does that mean to you? And so with curiosity, like you said, consuming like articles and everything, podcasts help a lot because you also hear the pronunciation, especially if they're native English speakers. That's even better. Not us. Not us. Yeah.

Just listening to design conversations. It's accessible to everyone who has an internet connection. So I would say listen to words in context. If you are keen on understanding like specialty words, what I used to do is just go on material designs website and go through the components.

and look at all the elements. What is a fab button? What are all these things? And trying to see them. CTA button, F2U experience, all those abbreviations. Yeah, yeah.

Yeah. So I kept looking at these elements sort of in visual context, but also trying to understand them in a conversational context. And then just by consuming content, you learn the words. So it's not the other way around. It's just...

going through lists of words. So what happened in my case was that at some point I felt like, I think I have a decent understanding of stuff in UX. And so then I would revisit these lists and like most of the terms there were not cryptic anymore. I sort of understood whether about and at least how you pronounce them.

I think what really helps is having conversations where you expose yourself. You put yourself out there, it's stressful, you're shy, it's like, I don't want to do this, it's uncomfortable, but it really helps you crystallize some of the notions and you essentially end up growing your confidence because you're able to use these terms, even if you use them badly in the beginning. Like if you misuse a term, it's fine, nobody will judge you for that. Just start talking and as much as possible practice the

being the one in conversation, not just listening after a point on. You know what's funny? Now, as you were talking, I realized something. The funny fact is that as soon as you master your UX vocabulary, and as soon as you feel confident speaking all those terms and abbreviations,

And all those fancy whatever terms your mother will never understand, you need to stop doing it and start speaking plain language so anybody can understand it. So what happened to me and what I see and keep kind of coming back to this is that, okay, it's good that you have your design community. You can speak fancy design terms with them, feel great about it, feel integrated in the community. But then we work a lot with other partners and stakeholders, with tech teams, with PMs,

with sales representatives, success managers, etc., etc., etc. And they don't need to know what is FTU experience or CDA button. I mean, most likely they will know because they also came across these in context. So they will kind of figure it in basic terms. They will know. However, they don't need to know those fancy words that you have to find a way to explain that fancy concept you learned into a plain language that the baby, like three years old, understand. And so, yeah, it's like this paradox that

as soon as you learn it, you kind of have to forget it and start speaking like a normal human being, not a fancy designer. So I would say let's move into the last part of this conversation where we try to unpack our top three takeaways for improving your English, although we did touch on many things. What are your top three ideas?

I think we haven't done it for a while, so I think I lost my habit of doing the top three things. Let's see. I think bottom line for me would always be that it's not going to be easy and you have to practice. And like Joanna just said, you kind of have to put yourself out there. If you are not as smart as Joanna, because I am definitely not, it definitely took me much more years to feel much more confident.

But I would say it was just a lot of exposing myself to those situations when it's uncomfortable and you know you're not speaking well and you know people look at you and judge you. But you have to go through it.

It's the only thing that helped me just to overcome it and just to get used to it. And one time I did mistake, second time you did mistake, third time you did mistake, first time you reflected and realized something. I just have to stop doing this. Also recording yourself helps a lot because you look back and you're like, oh, I did this mistake. I have to stop doing this. Or...

I don't know, even pitching. I think something I didn't mention is that I was doing pitches a lot. I was working as a startup founder. I had to pitch the project I'm working on for like four years. So every other day there's investor, I have to make elevator pitch. I have to make it concise. I have to make it clear and confident and be good at understanding those people and like immediately refrain the story to their needs.

And so pitching a lot, being in front of other people, being on a stage was really helping me with like boosting my confidence. But that just came with a lot of like exposing myself. So that's definitely my key takeaway. A few more takeaways, I guess, is really just, I think the great point that Ioana made was putting all those fancy design words, design terms, concepts into the context and

And I think that's why it really helped me. And I was so addicted to it. I happened to start reading Medium with like all those fancy articles from designers working in California and fan companies. And that really helped me because immediately you see picture, you see the use case, you see the description, you see how it's called and it's repeatedly called that way. And so in your head, you're strongly building that pattern.

and associating something like called this way with that, let's say, button or whatever. So putting the words or concepts into context is definitely my second takeaway. And the third takeaway, I would definitely still recommend you to learn English to improve opportunities that you can face because with better ways of articulating your thoughts,

comes also better opportunities, expanding the markets. You know, you will be feeling much more confident if the, I don't know, hard situation comes in and you have to explain it and you have to understand both point of views and then reframe it into some interesting like conflict resolution. You do have to have a good English for that. It's still a soft skill that requires you to understand people and to be able to explain things.

The earlier you start learning, the earlier you start exposing yourself and read things in context, the better it will be for your career, especially if you want to kind of work internationally and eventually maybe reach better opportunities. So, yep, that's my takeaways. How about yours? My takeaway? I think it's hard to

come up with something new after everything you said so I'm gonna try to think with new brain fresh like I haven't heard anything so I think that my first takeaway is that don't let not knowing English prevent you from pursuing a UX career you can definitely have a successful UX career in your native language without having to be international and a global collaborator absolutely feasible

If you do want to improve your English, maybe take a course. I think that's one way of going about it. Consume a lot of content and as much as possible, expose yourself to practicing, like having real conversations, even if they're clumsy, they're silly.

they're awkward and they're mostly wrong. Just have those conversations because that's the only way you can improve. And then my last point is the UX vocabulary is something that you build by doing, by practicing UX, by understanding how to build interfaces and how to solve problems. And again, exposing yourself to doing the work.

Yeah, I think those are our top three takeaways. I want to thank everyone who listened to this episode. I hope it was valuable. If you enjoyed it, leave us a review. If you want us to talk about anything specific, please send us your ideas. We really want to have conversations that are relevant. And I think that's it. Anything else, Anvi? No, just thank you for listening and we will see you on the next episode. Bye-bye. Bye, everyone.