#86 The Long-Awaited Return: UX and Life Check-in
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Hello everybody, welcome back to the Honest UX Talks. I cannot believe I'm saying this. I almost feel nervous by saying this because we haven't been meeting, we haven't been talking for about like five, six months. So we basically went Mia for a very long

time so abruptly for so long without any preparation or any announcement. And first of all, we would just want to say we're sorry for that because I think we just didn't expect that the life will take a toll on us. We were hoping we will be actually meeting at least once a month, you know, just to catch up. But honestly, this is the episode where we want to catch up to actually discuss what happened, what's happening, what will be happening and why we were not so active in the last months.

Thank you everyone who was reaching out, who was asking if we are coming back, if we're going to continue doing those episodes, because it definitely motivated us to actually find the time eventually and decided to come back on track recording. So with that being said, how are you doing, Ioana? Let's catch up.

It's definitely a strange feeling to unmute and answer the first question on our podcast. I'm happy to be back. Probably everyone listening now can tell that there's something funny with my voice. I'm receiving compliments for it, which is interesting, but I'm actually six. It's the season. It's autumn now when we're recording. And as some of you might know or remember, I have a three-year-old daughter.

And that means that I live in the system called disease of the week.

So every week she brings something home from kindergarten and I have to deal with it. So this is the current disease. Yay. I have an interesting voice. But we decided that this shouldn't stop us from getting back together because one, we didn't miss each other. For me, my conversations with Anfisa have always been shaping in a way. They helped me structure my thinking, unpack ideas and articulate ideas about the topics we're unpacking.

But also, I feel that I've missed this kind of long format interaction with the UX goodies and Amphisign audience. And yeah, I'm very happy we're here. And I think we have a lot of things to share. And I personally have changed tremendously over the past year. So yeah,

Definitely my ideas are pretty new in a way or updated at least. So hi, everyone. It's good to be back. We're talking only like what, a few minutes, but I can even sense that the depths of how you're talking is different. And I'm not talking about the voice, but even the pace in which you're talking. So I can even expect a lot of changes from what we're about to discuss.

Yeah, I guess we can get started by catching up on what's happening just generally. You can mention anything you feel like mentioning. For example, work updates, I believe, there is something interesting up there. We can also talk about family, babies, maybe. We will see. All right. How are you doing in terms of work right now, Ioana? Yeah.

Yeah, so I think we have a lot of interesting life updates and work updates. And I feel that you had an interesting insight in my voice changing the tone and the way I speak. And I think it has to do with this newfound passion of public speaking.

I might start with this. This is what randomly popped up, right? So I was recently in New York and gave my first big event on the stage with Crystal and other huge speakers, right? And I was there and I gave my talk and I was thinking, I can't believe this is happening in my career and I get to talk in front of people.

Of course, I've been doing the AI talk for a couple of months now. So because the landscape of AI is changing so rapidly, I keep changing the talk myself just for it to be updated and still relevant. So it's pretty much new content and it feels new every time I give it. But in a way, it feels also like I practice this. So it turns out that being there and meeting

the speakers and having conversations and then having people in the hallway stop me and tell me what my ideas meant for them and showing me the screenshot of the photos they took of my slides and giving me all the interesting angles that I can't otherwise explore or it's harder to explore online.

I had an epiphany. I realized that this is something I very much enjoy doing. I think I'm fairly good at it based on the feedback I keep getting. So I'm going to do more public speaking. It's something that I feel I've spent the past year trying to figure out what my next career moves should be. Do I want to move into building a design studio for AI? Because now I'm very active in this space. Should I build a design studio? Should I build a startup with GPT at its core? What should I do next?

and then

And then I realized that the answer to that shouldn't be any recipe, but it should be like just listening more to what's going on inside of you. And inside of me, this is what needs to get out, right? I want to be with people in person and have conversations and share my thoughts and grab their thoughts and response and just have this very social aspect in my professional life. So this was my recent epiphany. And then very quickly for the past couple of months, I did have a couple of

of major projects that happened. So for once, I'm launching an AI course for designers with Interaction Design Foundation. I shot it in July in Barcelona. And now it's super funny that it's being launched today as we speak. Like I see the social media messages rolling out.

It was launched one hour ago. So it's very, very new. The content is already a bit outdated, right? Because when they reached out to me initially, I refused because I said, I can't possibly create a course about AI that's still going to be relevant in six months from now. Like everything is changing at such a rapid pace that you can't possibly create evergreen content.

But they were very much aware. And we had a very interesting philosophical debate as to what are the kind of ideas that you can still put out there in the world and will age nicely. And they're not so closely related to one tool or another. Or you use tools just as examples for ideas, placeholders for ideas and stuff. And how can we make it so that it's still relevant in, okay, not 10 years. Probably people will laugh at it in 10 years. But in a couple of years from now, it should be still relevant.

So I recommend everybody taking it and giving me feedback so we can improve it and see if it's helpful and valuable. It's based on the webinars I gave with Hotjar and Interaction Design Foundation. And I still get everyday messages. I took your webinar. It was so useful. It helped me clarify ideas. I understand so much better now what's going on in the tech space. And so I get a lot of positive feedback. I'm hopeful that the course will be like that as well. So yeah. Can you maybe share some discount with our listeners?

Yeah, I do have the Classic Interaction Design Foundation discount. And maybe I can, I don't know, I'll reach out to them to try get even a bigger discount. I don't know. But we'll definitely add at least a 25% one in the show notes. And then yeah, see what else I can do to help people take this course because I think it's worth it. It's very timely. It's modern. It's like actual. So.

So, yeah, it's fun. It's fun. There's the pressure, right? Will it age nicely? But let's see how it goes. And I made an agreement with them that if I'm not happy with it in one year, we reshoot it. But right now I'm very excited about it, especially being in New York and getting all the positive feedback for all the talks I've been doing this summer. I know that there's value in it. There's definitely value and I can't wait for more people to access it. So, yeah, that's one big thing.

So and I think it falls under the big thing called AI, which sort of creeped into my life somehow. I wasn't necessarily very intentional about becoming specialized in AI, but I was lucky enough to work on an AI product in UiPath for over a year and also working with a PM that has specialized in AI for the past eight years. So I stole a lot of knowledge consistently and now I can have ideas about it. I can think critically about what's going on in the tools and the

updates and advancements and designers' mindset in this landscape. So I've been working on Clipboard AI for one year, and then we won an award by Time Magazine. That was also an interesting highlight. So Time Magazine called us in one of the best inventions of 2023, and it was like mind-blowing for all of us because we were a small team of engineers and one product manager, one designer. We were doing this, of course, with design leadership involved and

and all the leadership in UiPath, so it's not just us, but most of the things that are in there, they're essentially what my mind decided that this product should do and like the team's design decisions. So it was great to be recognized, even if they were in a very like commercial sort of maybe even cheesy environment.

thing like getting an award for the best invention how do you even measure that but it was great right so I was very excited about that piece of news and then the biggest news where all my conversation about AI leads up to this one month ago I joined Miro which is our favorite tool or at least for every designer out there at some point Miro must have been their favorite tool now

the landscape has changed a lot. But I'm joining Miro. I'm the first designer on their AI team. The AI team has been around for a while, but everything was built and designed by the product managers and the engineers. And now we have the complete triad, right? So we're meeting all the time, me, myself, and I.

I'm also meeting all the time with myself, but I'm meeting with my lead product manager and my engineering manager. And we have super interesting challenges and design conversations and the product and the problem space is incredible to design. And for a designer, right? You're designing for collaboration. How can you enhance collaboration with the help of AI? How can you help people communicate better and navigate information better? So the questions I'm dealing with are,

absolutely fascinating. And I'm very grateful for that. And I'm excited to work in a company that was my dream company. Yay. Sometimes magic happens and working in this space that I'm very passionate about and very active in. And I don't know, professionally, everything seems to be coming together for the past couple of months. So I think that's one reason for which I was not very available for putting structure or clarity or having these conversations that in a way

are snapshots of what's going on. It was because so much was going on and I couldn't like even snapshot it. I just had to live it in one way. And now I can start slowing down and re-reflect, restart the reflection part, which is essential to any journey.

professional journey. So I'm going to shut up now. Yay. And I'm very excited to hear about you and your life updates and personal. Honestly, I don't know if I can even start with updates because there is just everything you were saying. I just wanted to comment on that. So I'll just pour out all the comments.

Okay, so first of all, so many great events. Really, congratulations. I was almost like, I don't know if there's an English word for that. In Ukrainian, we have this saying when I have the white jealousy. I don't know if there's a term for that. But basically, when you're not jealous in a negative way, but in a positive way, I'm like, oh my God, so exciting. So cool. Oh my God. Oh my God. So I was so happy for you. Seriously, for every single thing that you just mentioned, right? The events, the conference in New York, talking about the favorite topic.

just the transition at work, right? Using your knowledge, shooting the courses, just so many things. And it's just so exciting. And for me, honestly, being right now in a place where I'm babysitting all the day, you know, like completely different kind of perspective. Seeing this after you have a baby, right? Because we started this podcast three years ago, literally the moment when you were given the baby, right? You were nine months pregnant when we started. And so it's

We have been throughout this journey and I remember you being on the maternity leave and now you're being celebrating your career in the best possible way. For me, it just gives me such a huge hope and seriously, like a huge, I guess, light on what to expect because we'll talk about it in a second, but obviously being, you know, home 24-7, taking care of the baby, it is kind of taking a toll on you and what's going to happen with my career in the future. So you are giving me a very nice, I guess, expectation of what still could happen.

Also, I wanted to say, oh my God, so exciting that you're in the mirror, you know, because I don't know how much you can talk about it. How

However, I'm really hoping that there will be glimpses of what we can expect on the collaboration in Miro, because I'm pretty sure most of us use Miro on a daily basis. Some of us, of course, use FigJam, Figma, and all the tools like that. But I feel like if it comes to collaboration with other stakeholders, tech stakeholders, product, marketing, other people, salespeople, they are not advanced in using FigJam. So it's more likely that collaboration within external team members, not design team members, have been actually...

in the mirror and so it is still very very interesting tool and we all love to use it I personally love to use it I am excited just to even hear about the behind the scenes not necessarily the details that you cannot expand on but the things that just you know the previews I guess okay so that being said what happened in my life I don't remember when we did the last episode to be honest I feel like it was probably me right like two three weeks before giving the birth I

everything has changed, obviously. So when we were recording the last episode, I believe I was doing the last online training. So it was like a master course on getting the job, basically the strategy course, masterclass with the ADP list when I was having a group of 20 people trying to kind of going through the masterclass program and doing the

practices with how do you find a job in the tarpaulin market as it is right now in 2023, right? And so we were talking a lot about that. That also kind of slowly became the topic of my key interest right now, because I keep doing the research. I keep talking to different hiring managers, different designers, and as I was away

Let's start from professional. I feel like it's something that I started doing already. So as I was away, I started focusing a little bit more on the side projects since I cannot focus full time, right? So I started doing a lot of free portfolio reviews, just mentoring sessions, right? With the people who are looking for a job. And so slowly, slowly, slowly, I feel like my content started moving towards that direction. I almost feel like it's more interesting to me, right?

now rather than, you know, in the past I was more interested in like general UX practice, you know, just different methods, different processes, different methodologies, different challenges, collaboration, stuff like that. Whereas right now, as I am being off the work, right, day-to-day business, I am more interested in just market because I can see the market. I talk to designers every single day.

And I feel like I'm still in touch with what's happening. And that keeps me afloat in a way. You know, generally searching for the job is the topic of my interest right now. And that's something I've been focusing a lot on, you know, in the last couple of months, five months, I guess. I will just mention a couple of things I did, but it definitely is not as huge as you have. It's like I didn't have huge...

changes in professional career, obviously. So I started doing the free portfolio reviews, right? That's just webinars that I want to still stay in touch with the community to not feel like I'm totally out. Then I started recording the new course. So after doing the masterclass live, which means basically I was meeting on the Zoom calls with the people. Now I started recording it to make it a self-paced course where I just took the feedback from

from the live program and more adapted it towards being a self-paced course, right? Meaning that the context has to be slightly different. And I kind of kept the same structure, whereas it's kind of built on three fundamental pillars with self-reflection, with understanding the strategy, with practice. Yeah, things like that.

building the strategic tools for you to be able to succeed at the job hunting process when the market is extremely turbulent and literally build this whole curriculum based on this. And as I was doing those free portfolio reviews, as I was kind of getting always like up to date with what's happening on the market, was hearing the stories from different people. I kept recording this video, of course, and I

think I started doing this one month after giving the birth. So July, I was like recording it every single day as much as I can. I have maximum two hours per day to do that. And I just finished it last night. And I was like, woohoo, finally I did it. So I recorded the last video as of last night. I still have to edit some of them. I have one week before we start the program with 20 people. And my ambition right now, I'm saying ambition because I have no idea how it will work out, but

My ambition right now is that since the course is recorded, I don't have to worry about the recording and editing and, you know, polishing all the slides and stuff like that. I will just focus on community efforts. So my goal is to actually run the community events, like kind of secretly launch this course on the beta with 20-25 people. I don't know how many people as of right now.

where the goal is that we can still have a small community meeting every week. I will have like some sort of recurring events based on, you know, this time we'll meet on talk about the strategy. This time we'll do the workshop on, I don't know, planning the storytelling for your portfolio. This day we will do the mock interview with the design manager. This day we will do, for example, I don't know, up critic mock interview and stuff like that. So my goal is to focus on the practical aspects

things whereas the theory is already covered on the course and this way I can actually as a mom on the you know maternity leave I can still not spend all the day on the content and just find one two hours a couple of days to be online with the community so at least that's my plan we will see how it goes I'm very excited because I'm so happy with the whole bulk of work is done and I was doing it for like

more than four months. Whereas the previous course I did, and we talked a lot about it, right, in those episodes, because when we started recording the first episodes for the Honest UX Talks, I was still finishing my first course and it was three years ago. And the first course I did took me seriously like two years to record. So it was crazy because I was doing the full-time job, the content and everything else. At the moment, I'm only focusing on this course and that took me four months to record. And I'm very happy because I don't have this dreadful feeling that I could never finish it.

So that's done. A few more things. I guess I can mention another effort here because I feel like this is going to be another episode of ours. We started the rebranding project for our podcast and we failed at it. And that's something that we want to unpack as a full episode, probably the next episode, because that's another interesting story I think we need to talk about.

And then a few more things. I don't know, just content. I was pretty much just doing the content, right? The emails, the sometimes stories and stuff like that. So not much. I guess that was me talking about the career. And there's not much there, obviously, comparing to what you did mention.

I guess that's it on my behalf. I also want to ask you, Anna, is there anything else beyond professional or even side projects that you want to share with us that happened so that everybody stays aligned and catching up? So on the personal side, I feel like a lot of things happened, but not, I don't know, been less reflective than I typically am, less planned and intentional and intentional.

deep and I've been more in the now and living and doing stuff and experimenting and learning. And so it's been a very enjoyable personal time for me. I felt like I grew on multiple levels and in a very accelerated way. And I feel that at the end of this year, I will end up being much more authentic

and in contact with myself than I ever was because yeah making decisions tough decisions even the one like leaving a very comfortable job where I was very happy and I had a very strong partnership with the product and engineering and it was great and I was doing something amazing and then

why do you leave something that's so good for you? And I left because I just wanted to experiment and learn something else. And I did multiple decisions like this in my personal and professional life. And that helped me get better at answering the question, who am I and what do I like? And so now I'm much closer to my own truth and

And I'm very happy that I feel like I'm becoming who I am. And this will reflect in my professional choices as well. So on a personal side, yes, everything is converging, right? My experience in the professional space is converging with my personal experience as a mother. The friendships or relationships I have, everything in my life is sort of pointing me towards growth and finding myself. So I don't know if this is very abstract.

But I think that that's the way we should keep it. How about you? How is the life outside work, your personal life? It's definitely much more intense and spectacular right now. I mean, you know what I'm talking about. You know it better. Yeah, I just don't know if I want to spend the whole, I don't know, 20 minutes talking about everything.

because clearly my life right now is not so much focused on the professional, but much more focused on the personal. Maternity leave in Czech Republic, you started one and a half months before the due date. So I started earlier and I gave a birth to the baby only two months after the beginning of my maternity leave. So right now, I believe I'm like seven months on maternity leave, which is quite a lot. I've never had such a huge break professionally. I'm still adjusting. I don't think I'm ready. I'm like, in my mind, I'm still feeling like I'm not

you know, done. I'm not gone. I'm still on board. You know, I'm trying to catch up with everything. I'm following the news. I'm talking to people. I'm trying to be relevant as much as possible because I do feel like it's one of the fears, huge fears that every mother is experiencing being cut off from work. And

I'm always feeling like, am I even relevant right now? What if I come back tomorrow? Will I be relevant at my job, right? Will people who came after me will do a better job? And oh my God, then it will make me not so relevant at the workplace and stuff like that. Those are the questions that are inevitable. And I don't know, at least maybe in my experience, that totally happened. Yeah, I've been sitting with the baby. I gave birth to the baby in the beginning of June.

Tough experience. I don't know if we want to go that direction, right? It's definitely not the topic of this conversation, but it was still okay. I have a cesarean section. Long story short, the recovery took me like maybe almost two months, but everything is great. I think from July to one month after giving the birth, I just couldn't, you know, live this life. I just needed to be professionally doing something. So like I mentioned, I started doing some side projects. The baby is five months old.

As of right now, I still don't feel like being the mother is my calling. I don't know how it goes for many people, but for me, I know for sure that egoistically, I'm still looking for ways to work on my side projects. I'm enjoying the baby every day more and more, to be honest. The first months were super tough and I felt like this is not for me. I'm struggling. I'm not fulfilled.

from the things I'm doing. I just want to go back. I just want to have time for myself. You know, all those stuff. Those are inevitable things. But every single day, especially the last two months, so month number four, month number five, it started changing because the baby is becoming a little bit more engaging, more fun. He's smiling. He's laughing. He's interacting with you more and more every day. And that changes the perspective a lot.

So I don't want to sound negative. It's just that it's this journey that you're on. And in the first three months, I was struggling a lot. At the moment, I'm learning to enjoy it. And I'm still searching for how to live with that, to be honest. Because some days I totally feel like this is not for me. I am not born for that. I'm very egoistic. I want my life back. Some days I'm looking at him and it's like, oh, damn, it's so good. It's so nice. It's so

amazing. You know, it's just this turbulence. It's a roller coaster of different emotions. Really, like when I'm leaving the house and I'm without him, some days I'm like, oh my God, I'm missing him. And then the other day I'm like, oh my God, I'm so good. So good that I'm out. And I'm not with the baby right now. Oh gosh, I need this life back.

It's not one answer. I just cannot give an answer on how it goes. So it's this journey, this is experience. You mentioned that you couldn't even reflect the last couple of months, the last half a year, because everything was happening. I mean, I wanted to reflect in some moments, I felt like I'm missing those podcasts, but

At the same time, I also feel like I couldn't reflect in a deep, profound way because there was a lot of those strong emotions, like this is very bad or this is very good. And if you're capturing me in a specific moment, I would say one perspective that will not reflect general experience, right? Like reflexive experience, looking back, what's the average? I couldn't see the average. I could see only the very sharp or like negative or very sharp positive. That's so far how it goes for me. I think like mind-wise,

I shaped or changed a lot my mindset from being the creator to becoming a consumer. And I used to look at this as a negative thing because I was always feeling like I'm a creative. I need to create. I cannot stop. If I stop, I'm lazy. You know, that kind of mindset.

As of right now, I started feeling this is a good thing for me because I started seeing things in the perspective. I started taking more courses, reading more books, reflecting on everything, not just work really, but on like relationship, my side interests, how I want to grow as a person. So having this space out of work gave me the opportunity to see everything from the bird's eye view. And that's something I didn't have before as I was a squirrel in the, what do you call it? Hamster wheel in the, you got it, I guess.

So I think that's a good thing about it, right? I started feeling a growth, even though many people assume, and I think this is a huge stereotype, that when you go to maternity leave, you're just becoming this vegetable that never sleeps, never has any time for themselves, and just, you know, mentally starts not progressing. And I don't feel that way, to be honest. Maybe that's a good thing.

think about my journey, but I feel like I actually started growing mentally. I started seeing things in the perspective, realizing a lot of things, realizing what I want to see myself, realizing how I want to shape my relationships, how I want to shape the new baby. And

myself as the professional. And yeah, I'm kind of happy about that. But that's not to say that it's a great journey. It's not an easy journey. And everybody who's going through it every single day and feeling like, why did I not praise mothers? I should have gave like mothers 50% discounts to my courses because this is freaking tough.

How those mothers are doing those? So yeah, it's pretty, really tough and filling for every single mother who's out there trying to hustle and trying to switch jobs or work. I have no idea how you guys are doing this. I'm still not back to my full-time job, but I guess it will be very tough. So yeah, that's it. I guess everything I wanted to say so far.

I deeply resonate with many of the things you've just shared. And my maternity experience has been very similar. I didn't identify myself as a mother. I mean, there was that very, let's say, evolutionistic instinct, very powerful, where I like the baby was my priority and everything, but also like my intellectual side.

was starving for work and ideas and abstractions and all those things. And I think you can definitely balance them. I think mothers are superheroes. I also believe that now. But it's been a very fulfilling experience in the sense that you can still be you and have this very important fundamental life experience while being you professionally, personally,

So it changes your identity, takes away some parts, but it gives a lot in return. And so now I feel like a more well-rounded person. So yeah, it's interesting that we both had major changes. Like yours is much bigger.

Yeah, it's a big change and it's forever. Yeah, I think this is it. This is what I would stop and just allow people to think about how the life of others looks like, what other designers are up to personally and professionally and how they can help.

If there's anything interesting you feel, you dear listener, I'm talking to you now. If you feel we should unpack further any of these topics, finding a new job, becoming a mother, how do you feel without the work, the fear of not finding your place in the world when you come back from maternity, all those topics. If any of these pieces of news we've shared seem interesting, let us know and we can expand on them in a dedicated episode. Yeah.

I totally agree. Yeah. I don't know if that's the bigger news than yours. I was like replying to your comment previously. But as of right now, it doesn't feel like that. I feel like I'm missing out a lot. But I know now seeing you after a few years, I see that it's not the end of the world. Like I said, right?

It's a fulfilling experience. I don't feel like that right now. I feel like, oh my God, you know, this kills my life right now. But I believe what many people say that it's going to be such a huge thing in a month, I don't know, year, time from now. So it's very interesting what to expect. Like I said, I only start to enjoy these moments and start to see the beauty of it.

Not to say this is not tough. It's super tough, but yeah, it's interesting. It's a roller coaster. Very interesting. All righty. Like you said, Ioana, if anybody wants to dive into any specific topics, we're up to it. Like you said, right? Those conversations are shaping us. It gives us a space to reflect and think back. And it's not only to share conversations.

as everyone but it also help us to see where we are going what's happening how they are feeling in different situations so I was missing it I'm very happy to be back and I hope that some of you stayed around because I know it's very easy to miss the connection and

if somebody is not updating. So with that being said, thank you so much for listening our little catch up. I'm sorry if somebody was expecting the design update. It didn't happen, but it's our honest conversations, right? It's honest UX talk. So it is what it is. And yeah, otherwise, I hope you guys are also doing well.

So I was recently in one offline meetup here in Prague, and I met two of our podcast listeners, which is very, very nice. And I always feel so humbled when I see new people. The girls I started talking to, they mentioned that they're listening to the podcast in different contexts. So one of them was listening to it when she was moving out.

from her apartment. Somebody else was also mentioning that they're also always listening to it in the gym. And somebody else said, oh, I'm always listening to this podcast when we're washing the dishes. And I was like, okay, I keep hearing those different contexts where people are listening to this podcast. So I feel like that should become our little tradition. How about under this episode, you find a little box and you mention there, where did you listen? How did you listen to this podcast? I feel like it's always super fun to hear how people are doing it. That's such a cool idea. Yeah.

Yeah, so send us your funny stories about the podcast. I love it. It's like I got a similar thing while I was in New York after the talk and people learned from the talk that I work at Miro. Now they started approaching me on the hallway. You know what? I made a Miro board for the house project we will be moving into. And then I'm having a baby with my wife. So I made a Miro board with all the things we need to buy and everything. And I introduced her to Miro. And so many stories about how you can use Miro for different life purposes. And so...

It's super interesting. Yeah, tell us your podcast stories. Where do you listen to our podcast and what is it helping you with? And that's it, I guess, for this first K-Shop episode. We're super excited to be back and we will see you on the next episodes. Bye-bye.