{"id":4141,"date":"2021-01-22T14:08:22","date_gmt":"2021-01-22T14:08:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.uxdesigninstitute.com\/blog\/?p=4141"},"modified":"2023-08-30T15:29:28","modified_gmt":"2023-08-30T15:29:28","slug":"student-success-stories-revisited-daniel-guy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.uxdesigninstitute.com\/blog\/student-success-stories-revisited-daniel-guy\/","title":{"rendered":"Student Success Stories Revisited: Daniel Guy"},"content":{"rendered":"

Daniel Guy was one of the very first graduates from our Professional Diploma in UX Design.\u00a0In his 2019 interview<\/a>, he discussed building his UX portfolio. In this piece, he describes how much his career has advanced since graduating.<\/p>\n

Learn how he\u2019s taken a big step up financially, become happier in his career and started a new role where he’s making a positive impact on the world.<\/p>\n

How has your career progressed since you\u2019ve graduated?<\/h2>\n

I\u2019m quite surprised with how fast my career has progressed since graduating.<\/p>\n

My previous employer really began to take me more seriously; there was a definite change in how conversations went and how people actually took my advice. They were also happy to give me a significant pay rise as a result of the extra qualification I had gained.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

It also presented me as a strong candidate for my current role as an interaction designer with the Ministry of Justice UK<\/a>. It was the best interview I\u2019ve ever done. I was confident talking about the UX process and showing how I work on a day-to-day basis. Getting that role was a massive step up the career ladder for me and the course was a huge part of that.<\/p>\n

Are you more satisfied with your career now?<\/h2>\n

I feel more fulfilled every day because I’m doing things that I really enjoy. My old boss encouraged me to go down the UX route, which I\u2019ll always be grateful for. UX is a really interesting area that\u2019s so satisfying to work in.<\/p>\n

It was important for me to move into the public\/non-for-profit sector because I\u2019m passionate about those kinds of problems.<\/p>\n

I like the idea of trying to improve the world in some small way, and make users’ lives better. Designers have an ethical responsibility to get that right as it will really affect the end user.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

In my previous role I was doing research, analysis, designing and prototyping as a single UX professional. Although I liked doing research in my last job, it\u2019s not necessarily where my strengths are. I\u2019ve come to UX more from the point of view of a graphic\/web designer.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve really enjoyed moving to interaction design, which is a focused area that sits within UX design. Now, I\u2019m working closely with user research and content design to do rapid high-fidelity prototyping. I love focusing on front-end web interactions and working closely with other UX professionals.<\/p>\n

What\u2019s your current role like?<\/h2>\n

UX is split between a few roles like interaction design, user research, content design, and sometimes service design as well at gov.uk.<\/p>\n

I work across three teams, each team has an interaction designer, content designer, a user researcher, a number of developers, a product manager and a delivery manager.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m the main interaction designer for digitising the Lasting Power of Attorney service. If someone is about to lose mental capacity, they need to put some things in place so that somebody can make decisions on their behalf. There\u2019s a steady move towards digitising these types of services across gov.uk. We\u2019re streamlining the Lasting Power of Attorney service so you don\u2019t have to do this through post, you can just do these interactions online.<\/p>\n

How important is a portfolio in the job hunt?<\/h2>\n

It\u2019s important to put your best foot forward and have a strong CV and portfolio. It takes a lot of work, iteration, and tailoring to get the job you want. It\u2019s something that you\u2019d really want to get right.<\/p>\n

The diploma helped me put together a strong portfolio, which I could add to over time.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Sometimes you\u2019d want a slightly more UI-focused portfolio, other times prospective employers don\u2019t care about the interface so much, and want to see your process and thinking. It can be hard to know how to pitch it, I\u2019ve definitely wrestled with that. It\u2019s helpful to have both kinds of projects but it also depends on what you want to do in your UX career.<\/p>\n

What\u2019s the move to UX been like?<\/h2>\n

I\u2019m sure many designers will empathise with me when I say that sometimes it can be so subjective. People will give you throwaway comments without any substantive reasons.<\/p>\n

I really liked how UX has more of an empirical take on things, you\u2019re measuring your designs. If you do some usability testing or run some analytics in UX, you can actually see if it\u2019s a good design or not.<\/p>\n

I think there\u2019s definitely transferable skills from graphic design to UI design. The user research side of UX is quite a big jump though. While there are some transferable skills, I was adding a whole new set of skills to my utility belt.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Do you have any advice for students looking for their first UX role?<\/h2>\n

Over time, you learn what you like. My values have certainly changed over time and it\u2019s helped me to know what I’m looking for. A couple of years ago, I wouldn\u2019t have necessarily known where I wanted to be or what kind of company I wanted to work for.<\/p>\n

I think initially it\u2019s very hard to be picky about where you work, find a job where you can learn. You\u2019ll be able to be more selective the next time you\u2019re job hunting, and hopefully you\u2019ll find a job that you\u2019re very satisfied with – like I am now.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Would you recommend the course? To who?<\/h2>\n

I would definitely recommend the course to others. It\u2019s probably the best decision I\u2019ve made in my career so far. It empowers you with the skills you need and the confidence to do it.<\/p>\n

It’ll be quite hard to break into it UX if you don\u2019t do the course. It\u2019s a no brainer to me. I\u2019d just say definitely do it if you can.<\/p>\n

Read Daniel’s 2019 interview here<\/a><\/h3>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Daniel Guy was one of the very first graduates from our Professional Diploma in UX Design.\u00a0In his 2019 interview, he discussed building his UX portfolio. In this piece, he describes how much his career has advanced since graduating. Learn how he\u2019s taken a big step up financially, become happier in his career and started a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":24,"featured_media":5174,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"content-type":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[306],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4141","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-student-stories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uxdesigninstitute.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4141","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uxdesigninstitute.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uxdesigninstitute.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uxdesigninstitute.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/24"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uxdesigninstitute.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4141"}],"version-history":[{"count":20,"href":"https:\/\/www.uxdesigninstitute.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4141\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9597,"href":"https:\/\/www.uxdesigninstitute.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4141\/revisions\/9597"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uxdesigninstitute.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5174"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uxdesigninstitute.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4141"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uxdesigninstitute.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4141"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uxdesigninstitute.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4141"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}