[GET CERTIFIED IN UX]<\/p>\n Take our Professional Diploma in UX Design course<\/span>\n <\/a>\n\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t<\/div>\n<\/section>\n\n Becca, who is originally from Dublin, is also the co-writer of the UX Design Institute\u2019s Mobile UX course and teaches it in cities across Europe. She reflects back on her journey into UX and some of the lessons she\u2019s learnt along the way.<\/p>\n \u201cI actually wanted to be a vet when I was really really young. Then I got to secondary school and realised that I was terrible at science and my inclination was more to the arts. So that dream quickly died.<\/p>\n \u201cI never really knew what I was going to do after school – we took all these tests and my results were pointing towards architecture. I was going to do architecture but basically, I got cold feet. It\u2019s very much, \u2018You study architecture, you\u2019re doing architecture\u2019. When you\u2019re at school, you don\u2019t know what jobs are really out there. This was definitely the case with UX, I didn\u2019t know about it in the slightest.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cPotentially, because I would consider myself slightly creative, which I think architects need to be, but they also need to be heavily process driven in the things that they do and the order that they do them in. That\u2019s very reflective of the UX industry as well. I know a few people who have come from studying architecture and gone into UX. I think they\u2019re very transferable skills.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI studied history and politics at UCD. It seemed like a very broad thing to do. I was really good at history at school and really passionate about it. History I loved but I really struggled with politics. I knew it was a good subject to study in college though, people kept telling me that anyway.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThe degrees are three years long in UCD, which is shorter compared to other universities. It was almost too soon for me to finish my degree, I didn\u2019t know what to do next so I thought I\u2019d do a Masters and figure it out. So I did a Masters in the History of the Media, which I was always interested in. I did my thesis on agony aunts in the 1960s, it was super interesting.<\/p>\n \u201cI was offered a PhD but it was very isolating working in history. You\u2019re alone a lot of the time with your head in books. This was at a time when there were absolutely no jobs so I decided to do a Masters in Marketing, which seemed like it was relatively creative but process driven as well. In hindsight, marketing wasn\u2019t my cup of tea.<\/p>\n \u201cI came out of college. After five years of being in college, you\u2019re like, \u2018Of course I can get a job\u2019 but then you get a reality check. So I took the first thing I was offered, it was a sales job that was a very client facing role. It wasn\u2019t the right role for me but it did help me to get a permanent sales job with the property website Daft<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cYes. I worked there as a business development executive. It was a sales job again and it was a brilliant place to work – managers were great, the people were lovely and it had a relatively flat structure as a company so it was a great atmosphere to work in.<\/p>\n \u201cI was still doing sales – I never liked sales, I just fell into it. We started doing more integrated forms of advertising on the website – there was one ad we did for Cadburys which had a fake Cadburys house listing on Daft and there was this whole persona around the ad. So even if you called the number on the ad, there was an answer message from the character in it. It was really creative.<\/p>\n \u201cAfter this, the CEO of Daft started talking to me about this thing called UX. I\u2019d never heard of it but everything about it interested me. He offered me a job in the product division, which was basically just Colman at the time [Colman Walsh of the UX Design Institute<\/a>].\u201d<\/p>\n![\"Rebecca](\"https:\/\/www.uxdesigninstitute.com\/blog\/wp-content\/\/uploads\/2018\/04\/resized-for-website-rebecca.png\" "\\"\\"")
<\/p>\nCan you remember what you wanted to be when you were younger?<\/h2>\n
It\u2019s interesting that the aptitude tests pointed towards you doing architecture – people make comparisons between architecture and UX in terms of approaches and mindsets. Do you think the tests pointing you towards architecture reflect something in your mindset that is equally applicable to UX?<\/h2>\n
What did you study at college?<\/h2>\n
You then went on to do a couple of Masters degrees?<\/h2>\n
Daft is where you began your UX career?<\/h2>\n