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then all the designers left and I was left alone. I would never be able to be good at it. It's like a blessing and the curse at the same time.
Hello everyone, how are you guys doing? Welcome to the first episode of our very new podcast, which doesn't have a name just yet. Hey, I'm Fisa. I'm really excited we started doing this little project of ours. I'm hoping that it's gonna turn into a very consistent and periodic series of episodes and I'm hoping that this is just the first conversation out of many we're gonna have, the
the first ever episode podcast officially podcast episode yay first time i would like to start this episode by probably introducing ourselves and just maybe quickly discussing why are we starting this podcast why are we starting this project who we are and what are our high hopes and then we can slowly transition to the topic of this first episode i guess i'll start with myself
My name is Anfisa and I'm a UX designer. Currently I'm working at Citrix, but in the past I was doing a lot of different things. I was doing a freelance, I was doing startups, I was teaching design, still teaching as well. So I guess I have a range of different experiences in UX industry. - My name is Ivana and probably people know me as UX goodies. - Oh yeah. - At least in the design community.
I am a UX designer currently working with UiPath.
which is a RPA company. And in the past, I've worked with other companies in the financial industry, healthcare industry, other freelance projects, done a lot of things in the UX industry. So how I got started in UX design, this is the story that goes like this. For the first half of my 20s, I didn't have any professional experience.
in the sense of vision or not even clear goals of any kind as to what I wanted to do with my life. It's important that I start with saying that I don't have a design background.
I didn't get any design formal education of any way. So design was something that came later in my life. And so what happened was that I was working in a bank for many years. I got hired when I was 20 in a call center, which is a very rough place to start your career with.
And then I kind of switched jobs, explored different areas, but nothing necessarily around design. Up to a point where I started working in the digital team of ING Bank, which is a company I was working for. And in that team...
At some point, the leadership decided that, you know what, we're going to need some UX designers in this team. And so the UX design role was created out of nowhere for the first time in our company. And of course, I didn't get it because I had no experience, but they brought in senior designers from other companies that were already doing this in the industry and had experience some over 10 years, which was very exotic for the Romanian market.
They started infusing the team with design culture and design activities. And I was witnessing all this and thinking that it's absolutely amazing. And it's like, it's genius. I want to do this. I want to be able to learn how to solve problems in a structured way, how to go about problems, how to...
create product that in the end will make people's lives better and so it all felt fascinating to watch. So how did you watch it? Have you been a part of some projects? Have you been a part in some meetings? How did you see this actually? Because I know that right now we work and we are so kind of isolated, we do our things in computers but nobody's like, you know, standing behind your back and watching what you're doing. So how was you integrated, I wonder?
Yeah, it's an interesting question. I was part of the digital team that contained the UX department and other activities. I was doing content management for one of our digital products.
And so somehow I was part of the team. I had a lot of firsthand access to what they were doing, but I wasn't doing the same thing yet. And indeed, when I decided that this is what I want to learn and this is what I want to be doing, I kept shouting it in the office so everybody would know. So I would get support from people when the right time comes.
And I was very vocal about it, but it still took a very long time until the opportunity actually came. But in that long time, I did my homework. I started reading articles, doing some research. I went to a weekend workshop to get some ideas.
flavor of what I should be learning and so on. And after a while, quite a long while, it did happen. And exactly like you said, I was actually shadowing designers, literally staying behind their back and watching what they were doing.
And this is something that I feel very lucky about. I got the opportunity to learn firsthand from designers doing design. And so I was in the right place, but I also kind of pushed for it because nobody wanted junior designers because there was no design culture. Senior people needed to build it. But somehow at some point things clicked.
And I went in this mentorship program, if you want, for six months and shadowing designers, getting taught by them and so on. And then finally, I transitioned officially into UX design role. And then all the designers left and I was left alone. Wow. As a very junior designer in a very big bank. Funny story that at that moment felt tragic. Yeah.
Because I felt extremely scared and overwhelmed. But in the end, it all worked out for the better. It pushed my limits. It made me feel that if I work hard enough, things, okay, they might not be, they will not be perfect in the beginning of your career. But I'll be able to just do my best, show up every day, be courageous and stuff like that. Yeah. And afterwards, I...
explored different side projects, switched my job and so on. But this is the story of my early days. Interesting. So basically you had like a journey on steroids. You enter it and then you had to fall through the waterfall. Like you have to do it all at the same time alone and it's crazy. But that is so amazing because you actually had like this unique opportunity to learn from seniors. And they, I mean, usually...
For most of the people who start today, it's like, it's a blessing to work with somebody senior level to learn from them and shortcut their paths. Even though it's hard, I'm 100% sure it was not easy. I think it's just still, it's like a blessing and the course at the same time. That's exactly how it felt. And yeah, I think it's, this is something that I always try to push for when I give advice to students.
aspiring designers, junior designers, it's really important that you try to find an environment in which you can learn from people that have more experience or lots of experience. Totally. And so being around senior designers is very important in the early days of your career. And indeed, like you said, I was lucky enough to have that. But I'm curious to hear your journey.
Oh my God. Where do I start? I didn't have such a linear journey as you. So I'm always struggling to like my biggest problem when I try to share stories, it's always like so messy and wicked and like,
interconnected with different things that I'm not able to do it quickly and so like you know story that starts with something and finishes with something different like it's it's messy but I'll try it's like the design process exactly the design process actually is very messy so stories around us are the same
Okay, so my story goes like that. I did had a background in design, but it was totally different type of design.
My parents are architects. So when I was finishing my school and they were like pushing me to draw, to take drawing classes from like five years old, basically. So when I was finishing the school, there was kind of no other choices for me, but to go for interior design because I was super bad at math. So I was like, okay, interior design. And I'm also from Ukraine where the practices are slightly different. So we usually just do pretty stuff. And then we start asking why did we do this pretty stuff?
So I had this mindset and I was also like doing, you know, 3D renders, beautiful stuff. I was inspired by things around me physically. And then after my bachelor in interior design, I was thinking I'm going to take a product design master somewhere abroad from Ukraine.
And so I was kind of tricked by the name or the title of the Master Degree course, Product Design. I was thinking the product design means furniture design, industrial design, building products and stuff. And then I also accidentally happened to enroll into Master course in Estonia, which is like a Nordic country.
And Nordic people or Nordic countries, Scandinavia in general, they have a very like pragmatic user-centered practices for like a very long time. It's in their blood. It's their culture. So I moved to Estonia, Nordic country, where people are very pragmatic. The whole country was very IT. Every second person had a startup. Every second person had...
like would build some digital service online, offline, whatever. It's like they were super IT oriented. And when I moved there and started my master's degree, I was like, what the heck? What are we doing? Like, what kind of research are we talking about?
where are the products let's build products i was expecting that but instead we had a lot of workshop about user-centered design user-centered thinking business classes and for me it was something new i didn't expect it was like a surprise surprise situation to me but um
Like long story short, it ended up the best thing ever happened to me because I found myself really excited about this whole thing. And, you know, first half year, I was really like, not sure what I'm doing here. But then slowly my whole mindset started shifting. And I was finally getting the fact that, oh, wow, I'm coming from this culture where we don't even ask those questions. We don't talk to businesses. We don't talk to users. We don't know what we're doing. What's the strategy? We have no clue about it.
But again, now it's better. So don't get me wrong. In Ukraine, we do know what is UX now. It was more like 10 years ago where people mainly would start with like art. And Ukrainians in general is very like crafty and art country where people are very good at arts, but not so good in general in approaches and like strategy and stuff like that. Now it's changing, luckily. But back then it was like a surprise to me or something completely new, new world.
So then I started studying it. I figured it out. I found it very cool and exciting and interesting. The final touch to it was...
one weekend when my friend just pulled me over to the startup weekend or like hackathon where you have like two days to build some product of like online product basically digital product and in my courses in Estonia we were mainly doing like services or product design also industrial product design so we were doing prototypes from cardboard some new gadgets and stuff like this
But when I get into this startup hackathon weekend, we were doing the digital product and I was the only person in the team who knew some Photoshop and Illustrator. So they said like, you'll be a UX designer. I'm like, what is that? I don't know. I'll do that.
So I was building like some wireframes over the weekend. And I was so amazed by the fact that you can build a product in just 48 hours with so many people in such a cool and creative energy. I was like, whoa, whoa, whoa. Usually we would have to go to the factories, to the manufacturer, wait until they engineer the stuff and then build the stuff and test. It just takes so much longer where you can quickly build products and scale them.
And it was like, wow, so cool. So I was instantly triggered by this whole thing UX.
And it was, I think, 2013, 12, when I started to hear about it, read Medium articles, started reading books, started taking Udemy courses. I think everybody knows Joe Natalie. It was probably the only course available back then. So it was my way to get there. But then, of course, slowly, slowly, slowly, there were internships. There were startups I was trying to build, again, from those hackathons that...
then I was somehow even ended up teaching design in the evening courses. So it was like a whole new complete long journey. I'm not going to go that way, but somehow it started surprisingly. I love the story. And I love the fact that in a way it's, it's like a story of any good product at some point you'd have to pivot and
as the right opportunities appear and you identify them. And I love how complementary our stories are in a way. So they show two sides of the same struggle of finding your way. I think what's common to our stories is that
we got really excited when we discovered UX. So I think that going back to the topic of this episode, getting started in UX design, I think the first step is to find out what UX design is and actually get excited about it. So it has to sound exciting. You have to get excited about solving problems and learning the,
methodology and process and how and it's it's very interesting that you're saying it i'm just wondering if it's possible to cultivate that excitement even i guess like now people still find it like somehow accidentally exciting because i mean again 10 years ago it was like you know
you never heard of it but then you figured it out and it got interesting like i wonder how to get excited about it and if it's even possible but you're right it's possible to transition from anywhere like from from all the like social studies psychology it marketing management sales etc like even the support as you said support is also very common background to transition as you hear the pains from the users so like it's possible
But it's a good point to start with the excitement and not just kind of being, you
interested in this profession because everybody else gets into it and because the salaries are good and because you know opportunities are online not because of that but because of the process and because what you're what you're about to do in this industry another point why i think it could be exciting to get started which other people might not understand instantly is in my personal opinion is the community i think like it people are
not just IT people, interdisciplinary, digital, whatever people are very creative today, especially when you start collaborating. And that's why I love the hackathons to get started with. It's just this energy when everybody collaborates and everybody brings something to the table. And
I wonder if Hackathon could be this starting point for somebody as well. Because I think it's like a great way where you can just all together find a solution to the problem, not just like you do it, you know, and you go ahead and figure it out, even if you didn't have any experience, but it's more like together collaboration. Everybody brings something to the table and everybody has different experiences. I think there are two ways to think about getting excited about UX design. One way is that you organically get excited.
So you just discovered this world and it feels fascinating and you feel it. It's like a feeling. It's nothing that you can control or you can produce. It's just there. Or even if it's not there, it doesn't mean that we all feel illuminated when we find something and we know this is what we want to do for the rest of our lives. It's possible that you don't have this excitement before you actually try something.
to play with UX design and explore it a little and get a little immersed. So this is where hackathons or any kind of immersive experience that lets you explore in a practical manner what UX design is, could be the answer to how do I find the excitement to
start this journey and stick with it and do all the effort that it requires in order to become a UX designer. So maybe we should have more hackathons, I think, or we should have more events that are helping people who are looking to see if design is the answer.
Getting back to your point on community, maybe if every city or city that has enough designers fosters a community spirit in which there are events and there are things that happen in the weekend and people can just go and talk to designers and explore different projects and
hackathons if you want and so on. I think that the excitement can be there just when you read about UX design, but it can also be fostered and cultivated and gained after you've played a little with it. You can have a marketing background or you can be an accountant or you can be in the legal department. I think that there's something that I've learned throughout the years is the fact that
Your background, whichever it is, has probably taught you something about design one way or another. Sure. And it's part of your story and value proposition, if you want, as a designer, or the different perspective that you can bring to the table, the specific or particular lens that you can look at problems through if you're a legal background or you have a marketing background and you look from a, I don't know, perspective.
customer persona perspective and so on. So I think that not only you can transition from any background, but most
Most times your background, however distant it is from UX design, can become an asset, can become an advantage, and can become part of how you differentiate and define yourself as a designer. So I think that people shouldn't be discouraged by the fact that they're currently lawyers. And I have a designer friend who actually went to med school. So he's a doctor.
but he's the best designer we know in the Romanian market. One of the best. When I think of it, I have also like a lot of friends who transitioned to design from completely different backgrounds as well as legal, as you mentioned. There is this Christina, you probably know she's from Hungary. She's UX sketching or something like this, sketching for UX. She's also from, she's coming from like, yeah, legal background. Is it a thing?
- Yeah, I think it is. - Legal studies, whatever. And there are people who transition from anthropology, sociology, psychology, those things are very common in UX. If you have those backgrounds, you'll probably be really a good asset for the company. I also know the companies who actually hire specifically people with different backgrounds, just because they want to kind of diverge different opinions inside the company and challenge any decision or any solution from different perspectives.
And also I've heard about some startups who are like, if the startup specializes in some specific niche or industry, like say, I don't know, medical, bioengineering, something like this, they would hire people who maybe studied engineering and then transitioned to UX and they would look only for those unique unicorns with this intercrossed kind of backgrounds.
So I think it's really a great thing to have and to be proud of. And it's interesting that people tend to have this fear that I don't have design studies, I don't have the right background or the right experience, and it's going to be so hard to transition from a completely different world. And it's just, it's a valid fear. It's justified. But at the same time, the industry shows that
there's no reason to actually worry from it. And I think this is another interesting point that maybe I would like to see your perspective on it. What do you think is the biggest fear or set of fears that people who are looking to transition into design have and they tend to be blocked by it? Or what are their biggest concerns? I think I'll start from my personal perspective or experience. When I was transitioning and as well I had
Like this strange experience, even though I had a master's degree, I still didn't feel confident at all. And my biggest problem in the beginning was like a lack of confidence and trust in myself. I was feeling imposter forever. Like I felt like I would never be able to be good at it.
And it was kind of common, not just because, because I know that for some people it's coming from the fact that maybe they don't have education in it, or maybe they don't have whatever, maybe they're not smart enough or something. But for me, it comes from, I guess, traumas that I had from my teachers. Some of the trainers I had in my past, they were like,
I would say not a very professional teachers. They would not help me. They would just say like, ah, like they would give me a science that I'm not doing it right. And I started to build this in confidence in myself. And then every time I would start a new project or maybe I would start an internship, I felt like I'm not good enough. And that was like a very long journey for me to gain that confidence. And I feel like many people right now lack the confidence.
because whatever the traumas they could have in their past, people, most of the times when they enter the field, they have this imposter syndrome that I'm not good enough and who knows what it takes to become good enough.
So I think that's one of the problems. And I usually try to help build in the confidence with all the students I'm having. I'm trying to support them. I'm trying to push them and give them encouragement. In my particular experience, I think I've gained the confidence only once I started teaching design.
And you know this pyramid of learning. If you Google the like, how do you learn something, you will see that 5% of your studies, the theory, like I don't remember how much like reading is 10%, whatever, 15% is maybe practicing, but the biggest chunk
of what gives you confidence, in my case it was like that, is start talking about it, teach it, share it, try to express yourself. Once you start talking about it, you understand how many gaps you might have. So I think one of the things that many beginners need to work on and try to be aware of it and try to focus on it and try to find ways to overcome it is to work with this imposter syndrome and in confidence in themselves.
And what is your opinion about it? I wonder. I was about to say that fighting the imposter syndrome is kind of never over. You're just going to live with it. I mean, I have often moments of self-doubt, but I think they're healthy. They're normal. I think everybody has them. I think that if you don't have them, it's a reason to worry. Am I being self-aware enough? Am I questioning myself? Am I evolving? Am I looking at my weak points and so on?
but you've mentioned that you had the trauma with your teachers and I think that this is very interesting because indeed we build our confidence and we build our self-esteem based on the experiences we have with the world outside and I think that it goes even way back in the
way more back in the past to our childhood where we have formed this very basic image of ourselves and some people maybe they didn't have the right experiences in their childhood or not enough encouragement or not a very safe environment and so they turned up uh becoming adults that don't trust themselves enough and they don't have enough confidence and self-esteem that's a healthy uh
that was built in a healthy manner. And so they start believing that they cannot do things or they're inferior to others or that other people have skill sets that they don't have or they'll never have. And what I want to get to with this point is that, you know,
Actually, this is so you can be good at anything as long as you practice and you start building experience and learning about it. And of course, maybe I won't be an athlete ever. So that ship sailed away. But at the same time, I now know that if you spend enough time into immersing yourself in a subject or in a profession that you want to become literate in, then it
It's a mixture of finding in yourself the right set of qualities and I think that everybody has their own combination of qualities. So I haven't yet seen a designer that lacks any talent for design. They have.
They have something that helps them or makes them valuable. Superpowers. Yeah, exactly. Superpowers or something that's very particular. And so if you mix this, the qualities you have, your strong points with learning and effort and practice, you will probably get there. So I think nobody should see themselves
themselves as inferior or incapable of doing. I was also thinking that it would often depend in your experience on the feedback you receive in your beginning. Again, maybe I'm coming from my personal experience, but I feel like if you receive a feedback in a very nice and structured way that motivates you to keep going,
It's great if you receive the feedback from somebody who you feel like is not even not just not helping you, but only putting you down, then maybe it's not somebody you want to receive the feedback from or somebody you want to listen to. And I would just reflect on how do you feel after it? It doesn't mean that if somebody tells you negative comments, you should run. It's not about that. It's more about the form in which the feedback was presented, how it made you feel about yourself.
it's totally fine to receive negative comments in terms of your work and maybe sometimes things need to be fixed. It's totally fine, but in the shape in which you're receiving it, it's also kind of important in the beginning because I know it could be sensitive in the beginning. I was not lucky with my teachers, mentors, whatever.
But then when I started internship, I had a very good mentors who were super nice. They were so helpful, so encouraging. They would come to me in the right moment. They would give me tasks that I'm capable of doing. They would tell me they trust me. They would come without pushing me. They would see what I'm doing and give me nice corrections. And that would just like motivate me and encourage me to keep growing instead of, you know, somebody coming and saying like, this is bad. I'm not going to say bad words, but this is really bad. And like,
and put you down and like don't explain you why is it better stuff like this so i think it's also maybe it's good to be mindful about who you're taking feedback from and don't trust blindly people who have experience not everybody who have experience can teach i guess i i
I think that teachers should also get, I don't know, some sort of certification or like medical doctors that are allowed to practice medicine. Then teachers should be the same because I think that you can really hurt the career and the future and the potential of your students if you are unable to support them and foster a safe
psychologically safe environment and also I think that you've mentioned that in your internship you've had good mentors that were supportive that were giving you a positive experience and they had a nice framework of giving feedback and this is something that I think it's a life skill that everyone should have knowing how to give feedback not only receive feedback and criticism but
in a healthy way you deal with it in a healthy way but also be able to give feedback in a way that's not traumatizing the person you're talking to and that makes sense and it's it's focused on the work or the problem and not on the person that much uh this is one thing and indeed i think that getting back to our um how to get started in ux design point um how
having a mentor or having something that supports you in the early days of your journey when you don't know what you're doing and you don't know if you're good at it and you have no idea whether the work you just came up with makes any sense many times. So I think you need some guidance is very important in building your confidence. And having a good mentor or having a good environment or having even a senior designer friend
that can help you with some critique sessions or exchange conversations. Finding someone that can support you in the early days of your journey is essential because it will help you move
through the points where you feel like, I don't know what I'm doing. I don't know if I'm good at this. I don't, I don't understand. I have no idea what I'm doing. Exactly. Yes. I think we have so many interesting points already. How about we try to summarize them and maybe, yeah,
kind of top mind what are your top three things you would recommend to anyone who's getting started today yeah I think it's hard to choose only three oh yeah maybe you can do five if you want but leave something for me okay so I would I would I
I would hang on to the point of having a mentor or finding somebody that can guide you and that you can ask questions and has experience in the design field to answer all your questions. So it can be a design friend, it can be a mentor, it can be somewhere in your workplace or in a different company, someone you meet on LinkedIn. The world is now full of opportunities.
Instagram is also a nice community for UX designers. So find someone, maybe not necessarily a mentor, but someone that you can talk to and help you clarify the questions that will come up in your early days in a very natural way. The second one would be try to research in a more
in the most practical way possible. So, uh, I, I liked when our conversation went into the area of exploring in an immersive way. Um,
UX design so you can enroll in a course if you have the budget and time and resources a course that also has practical applications or you can try to I don't know do a dummy project with the help of your mentor and friend and just have you have an idea or you see a problem in a product that's
broken and you want to do it better and then get really get your hands dirty with uh with exploring the process of ux design but this also implies that you kind of got an understanding of the process so the third point which is not actually the last point is to to learn to find a
course probably it's the best idea and then just learn the theoretical part so you can apply it in a practical way so to summarize my summary yeah find a course or find a way of learning
apply what you're learning in a practical way maybe with a dummy project or a hackathon or anything of that sort and then find a mentor or a friend or someone to support you in the in the early days totally agree with your points it's really hard to add something because those three points i would say like they are fundamental no it's really good because i think like what you've just
said it's really important and it would be also probably my first three points to mention just so it's like triangle learning triangle but then to support a couple of those points I would also add that um maybe first point that helped me personally was to be super proactive so don't be shy it's okay even if you're maybe too active um
Don't be afraid to be in every event. Don't be afraid to meet everybody. I mean right now it's impossible, but at least online. Maybe it's impossible to go to offline hackathon, but even you can go to online hackathons. Try to be as present as possible.
Again, events, conferences, meetups, Slack channels, Instagram community, et cetera. Be integrated into this community because this community is amazing. They have a lot of lessons to share. And if, for example, you cannot even afford having one mentor having calls with you every week, you can definitely learn bits of everything from different people. So maybe find, that would be a second point, but maybe find five role models you want to follow and try to understand how
What do you like in their work? Maybe personality, the processes they follow and try to learn from them. If you cannot afford having them as your mentor, see what they're doing, try to reverse engineer their processes, their projects, et cetera, et cetera. So I guess my first point was being proactive. Second point, try to find role models and,
try to follow and learn from them. And the third point, maybe look for a company you want to learn from. And if it is possible, of course, not always as possible, but you can try to get an internship there because if you see that this company is preaching the same kind of experiences that you would like to practice, think about the company you want to work for. What's the best company you can find in your area or even in the world remotely?
and try to get an internship there. Try to get in touch with people who work there. Try to ask about their experiences. Try to ask if they're looking for interns. Try to ask if you can be helpful. Think where you can be helpful. Try to see from the outside if you can do some, even like a free gig, free project for them to show that you're really interested and try to get inside because when you're inside of this team, and that's again a point from the story of
of you, Ioana, you were in the team. You were lucky to learn from people who have experience. And even if you don't get paid and you get this internship, it's priceless. And in the beginning, it's just priceless because you shortcut your way
I don't know, 10x, you can do a lot of mistakes doing it your way and figure it out on your own ass. Or you can just learn from the best, from the people you want to learn from, doing the projects with them. And then after even you finish this internship, you can already have this confidence. At least you would know what it takes to do things, how it works. So I guess that would be my three points. Proactive.
role models and internship if possible. Just one more point on your point. Yes, of course. I love the fact that you're talking about not being shy and reaching out to people and this is another prerequisite for making your life easier in the early days as a designer. Just reach out to people. It might feel strange in the beginning. I'm writing to this complete stranger but in my career
the best things came out of completely random interactions I had with other designers, be it online, be it, you know, at events or something. And so, yeah, you have to actually be brave enough to reach out to people and invite them over for a conversation or coffee or anything along those lines and learn from them. And yeah,
Yeah, build a sort of network if you want. That will also help you find an internship and a job later on. So it's win-win. Yes. And that also ties into those networking events. If you can get to know those people and have this warm introduction first, then you know who to reach out to. And if you feel that it's maybe not nice to reach out to people you didn't know, then you can start with offline, if possible, networking. It's so strange to say this in Corona times. Yeah.
I guess on this positive note, I'd like to finish our first episode. Thank you so much, Ioana, for all your nice points and for your story. It was really nice even for me to hear your story and to get some kind of lessons out of her. Yeah. Any final words you want to say?
I want to say that I'm hoping that this becomes our little weekly monthly routine and that even though we didn't, I'm sure we didn't get to cover everything we know about getting started in UX design. We did cover it a lot and maybe in our future episodes, we will tackle more on this topic. Thank you so much for listening, everyone. And thank you so much for taking your time and wishing you the great start at your UX career.
See you on the second episode. Bye-bye. See you. Bye.