Mapping the journey of a design career
A transcript from a recent talk I just gave at UX Camp Chicago: Winter Edition
To watch the video recording, please go to this link: Chicago Camps Vimeo. If you are interested to see more of these types of content, please check out their Vimeo Channel. Loads of interesting and thought-provoking talks from such talented designers in tech. It was a pleasure to be a part of this.
Intro, or “Origins of an Origin Story”
Before I begin, I would like to thank everybody for being here today at UX Camp Chicago: Winter Edition. I am happy to be here, and to share the stage with amazing people from the UX and tech industry. I hope you all get the chance to catch the other speakers as well. There’s a lot of interesting ideas being discussed today and it’s real pleasure to be a part of this.
My name is Nikki and I am a product designer. I design digital products and experiences.
I am here to talk about a design career. More specifically, a design career in the format of a user journey map (in true UX fashion!). To make it even more personal, I’m using my own career experiences, stories and all the lessons I’ve learned along way as the content for the said journey map.
For those of you who don’t know, a user journey map, as defined by NNg nielsen, is a visualization of the process that person goes through in order to accomplish a goal. In a nutshell, it is a timeline that shows the overall experience of a thing, or a product.
One of the most critical goals of a user journey map is to tell a story. A cohesive, and well-researched story, hopefully. And right now, the story I want to tell is a story of a design career.
Just like the products that we are designing, we, too, are a work-in-progress.
We’re constantly going through multiple iterations at any given time.
From the problems we chose to solve to the companies we choose to solve them with, our careers are inherently rich in stories.
Stories that are built in the foundation of both successes and failures.
Like every good story there’s the beginning, the middle and, hopefully finger’s cross, an end in the very VERY, VERY, VERY distant future. I hope!
For all of this to make sense, let’s rewind back to the beginning of this story. “How did you get started with design?” . It’s a question I’ve been asked so frequently nowadays. I started out in the most… uninspiring of ways. Basically, I had no plans of ever becoming a designer. I came to this field, by complete accident. I’ll get to that part in a second.
See when I was a kid, I was convinced that I wanted to be a film-maker. I was always inspired by the legends in the industry such as Disney, Star wars, Spielberg, to name a few. Grew up watching these films. In fact, my favorite was The Sound of Music.
But then life happened, I didn’t get into the university that I wanted. I was never going to become a filmmaker nor a creative writer.
Instead, in 2008, I found myself in design school. I applied to everything and got into nothing. This was the only place for me. Despite that, I had high hopes.
I learned everything from producing videos to building websites with HTML, CSS, Flash.. all the good stuff…
I wasn’t very good at them, at first.
To be fair, it was probably my fault — I wasn’t taking myself (and the craft) seriously enough back then.
It also didn’t help that, a few years later, I found myself drowning in a sea of mediocre jobs. I was severely underpaid, and frustrated. It wasn’t just anxiety that really pushed, but also just the general discontent for what I was doing. And I was doing a lot. That’s the strangest part. I kinda wanted to pursue photography, while also practicing graphic design, while also exploring web design, while also doing a lot illustration on weekends. I was all over the place, and it wasn’t really a fun situation. I was 24, 25 and my design career was a bust. So, with nothing to lose, and everything to gain, I made the change.
Sleepless Nights with Advertising, literally.
And that change came in a form of… ADVERTISING. I got into the innovation/digital team of a huge Philippine-based ad agency that built major brands in and out of the country. It was then that I first got my real wake up call and made me question my actual worth as a designer.
Looking back, it wasn’t the easiest of experiences. (No life changing ones are, to be completely honest) I had to do the dirtiest, the lowest of tasks for a designer already armed with a 6-year of professional experience then.
I had no prior awards or recognitions or anything substantial really that was worth taking seriously. So naturally, I started at the bottom, doing some crazy gifs and Facebook ads at 1 in the morning, eating scary rejection emails for breakfast, and getting the same cycle of production work come lunch. I wanted to be an Art Director so badly.
But you know the saying, “Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work”? Well, in hindsight, I was living it. It describes perfectly what this Wake Up Call phase is all about.
Although I was at my lowest point in my career, the things I’ve gotten out of that era was totally worth it. I got more than just the thrill of a career upgrade. I was introduced to UX in the most unconventional of ways.
It made me realize that if I needed to be better, I have to focus on a few key areas of design and commit to them. That’s exactly what I did.
Sure, the process of learning and unlearning things grounded me, and destroyed my ego in the best and worst ways possible.
But it all paid off especially when I started landing some amazing projects, and one of which was the Star Wars Interactive one appropriately called The Blue Harvest. This was such a monumental opportunity for me, and it boosted my portfolio significantly. To say that this is one of my biggest projects to date is an understatement. As a designer, creative, and someone who grew up watching Star Wars films, this was a dream come true.
And behind every grand dream is a process, synonymous to hardships, patience, resilience, frustration, humility and all the good stuff that makes it absolutely worth it. This eventually became the holistic framework for my future projects. I took everything I learned (the hard way) from this project to the next — — hoping that my lucky stars land me projects similar or better than this one.
So we are now on the tail end of the wake up call stage. Just to express how massively life-changing this phase was for me. I’d like to share a few things I’ve learned before we move forward.
Lessons Learned, the Hard Way
# 1: Shitty moments, they don’t define you. At any point in time, you can change the trajectory of your careers just by making a few good decisions and sacrifices.
The struggle is part of the process. You have to accept that very early on, and just focus on making the craft better.
This one needs no further explanation. I’ll leave this to Yoda.
Life is not a brief..
This is my favorite lesson of all.
Getting past the Wake Up Call stage was BRUTAL. I learned a lot. And, at that time, it wasn’t as clear to me as it is now but a lot those experiences served a purpose. I’ve developed tenacity, which came in handy during the earlier days of job hunting in the United States. This is what I call “The Aha! Phase.”
As you can see, based on this map, my emotions, at that time, were drastically becoming increasingly more positive, and energized. And for a good reason.
Proud Immigrant Moment
So what happened was I had to leave my country, had to leave a job i’ve come to love to start all over again. There were a TON of surprises, for sure. But the biggest one of all was: I didn’t think that at 28, I would be an independent overseas Filipino worker living and working in a foreign country, much more so in an extremely lucrative, stressful & overly competitive industry — the tech. It honestly felt like a some sort of a plot twist, in a movie.
This was also right around the time when I shifted my focus to User Experience, primarily
I don’t know what is it about being here in the US but I’ve experienced a new form of hunger and drive for just about everything related to this amazing field. I read books. Lots of books.
Resolution, for now.
When it comes to this field, I’ve learned that It’s okay to not follow a linear progression. Diversify, not just your knowledge, but also you know, the type companies and industries you work with. Follow your curiosity and see where it leads you and your work. Sky is the limit, especially if you are prepared to use your STRENGTHS. It is really all about playing the long game and betting on yourself relentlessly.
I have been immensely fortunate enough to work with these companies, along the way.
But, as important as those things are, that’s not really what this “Aha!” Phase is all about.
This is all about redefining what it means to be happy by DOING THINGS. The more I think about it, the more I am convinced that happiness is really doing things that make you feel invincible, and strangely human.
It is about telling the world that Hey, this is what I can do with my hands, and brain. Show me how we can change some things with them. For the better. It’s not that UX is perfect. It’s that, UX is perfect for me. In choosing it, I choose, with great pleasure, the responsibility to be a problem solver, user advocate, and principle-builder at any given time. I can’t think of a better use of my life than be of complete service to this incredibly satisfying and rewarding field.
Going back again to the map, as you can see, there’s, without a doubt, a direct correlation to happiness and where I’m putting the vast majority of my energy on.
And that energy is definitely something I took with me in the resolution phase, which is the present. The last 2 years. It’s been quite a journey so far especially coming from the first few phases. Lots of ups, and memorable downs but here we are. Despite that, I really feel like I am just getting started.
And I found that the best way to keep on learning new stuff, aside from doing, is to teach. Recently, I’ve been co-teaching a UX course over at General Assembly and a Brooklyn-based platform called RookieUp. If you’re ever in a similar position, consider doing the same things, teach, share and just maybe influence people’s lives along the way.
Now more than ever, we could use all of the optimistic voices that we can gather. It’s quite easy to be a skeptic, especially nowadays; it is much harder to be courageous and actually be committed to being the change you’d want to see in the world. Starting with design.
And of course, like what I always tell my students, never miss the opportunity to write. Write about any and every lesson you’ve learned, because it’ll help you become a better thinker, and also because you’ll never know who you’ll inspire. Last year, I launched my own newsletter called Working Title.
There’s a thought-provoking except from an article that Slack CEO Stewart Butterfield wrote on medium. “The answer to why? is because why else would you even want to be alive but to do things as well as you can?”. I couldn’t agree more.
So let’s see how we’ve done this. Started out in the discovery phase, and then moved towards the wake up call phase where a bulk of the lessons learned came from and finally, we’ve ended this on a happy note with the Aha! Phase as well as the Resolution.
This is the user journey map of a design career. While time may be linear, experiences rarely are. It’s completely up to us to design our chosen paths and to play the cards we are given. We can’t change a lot of things, but we can certainly change how we react to what is in front of us. Opportunities come and go, but you have to be prepared in case you meet the ones that can change the trajectory of your own careers. To each and everyone of you here, I am genuinely excited for you to meet those said opportunities. And once you do, never ever take anything for granted. Thank you for your time and I hope you learned something new.
Thank you Russ and the whole team of UX Camp Chicago.
Another reminder: to watch the video recording, please go to this link: Chicago Camps Vimeo. If you are interested to see more of these types of content, please check out their Vimeo Channel. Loads of interesting and thought-provoking talks from such talented designers in tech. It was a pleasure to be a part of this.
About the author
Nikki is a Sr. UX Designer working for a data company in New Jersey. In the last 2 years, she has helped design & build a holographic platform, contracted for a research team inside Fidelity Investments, worked in the Design Operations side of an e-commerce company, mentored brilliant design students/career-changers, advocated for UX best practices at RookieUp, have co-taught UX courses at General Assembly and have also contributed directly to the growth of the Mentorship program on UXPA-New York. Designing for a better world is her life. She also runs her own newsletter, working title, about her thoughts on the future and more.
