When I left college, probably 20 years ago, it would have been print design.\u00a0 But given the time it was, I quickly started working in digital design, mainly websites and stuff like that. It was in the course of that work that I found myself solving what I would have later found out to be UX problems. So I was thinking \u201chow do we make people flow through easily?\u201d or \u201chow do we get better conversion rates and stuff like that?\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n It was only later on that I discovered UX and got to understand that some of the things that I found interesting were part of this UX thing.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n [FREE UX DESIGN COURSE]<\/p>\n Click Here to Dive into the World of UX<\/span>\n <\/a>\n\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t<\/div>\n<\/section>\n\n I had been working in a branding agency in Waterford for about 10 years. I really got to cut my teeth there as a professional designer. My design skills developed but so did my project management and client relationship skills. It was great. But in the last two or three years, I felt our paths deviating a little bit.<\/span><\/p>\n I was becoming more interested in UX and researching and analysing users’ problems. And it\u2019s not that where I worked wasn’t interested in that, but it wasn’t their sweet spot. Their sweet spot was branding \u2013 they love developing brand stories, identities etc. – and out of those projects would come websites. While I would push for user testing and analysing research, it was difficult to get the budget and resources from clients to add things like that to the project.<\/span><\/p>\n I did get to do little bits here and there –\u00a0 and I helped introduce UX thinking into the design process in that agency –\u00a0 but the time had come for me to move into what I felt was a more appropriate career for me.<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n There was a colleague of mine who was starting on a new website project. When she went on maternity leave, she handed it over to me. She told me that we would need to create some user journey maps and things like that. I’d never actually heard of these terms before, so I enrolled into a <\/span>Design Skillnet<\/span><\/a> course on Journey Mapping. That was the first course I did and I found that interesting, but not totally applicable to what I was doing. It was more service design-oriented.<\/span><\/p>\n Then I did a UX intro course with UXtraining.com<\/a> and Gareth Dunlop, who is affiliated with the UX Design Institute. This course was run by Waterford Chamber of Commerce and it was an introduction to lots of UX topics. It got me aware of Gareth, who\u2019s from Fathom<\/a>, and it brought the UX Design Institute onto my radar.<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n I would have Googled around and looked up a few things but what would have sold UX Design Institute to me was the price and the ability to do it in my own time. <\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n I have two kids, so I didn’t want anything that was going to be too intrusive on my time, because I was going to be doing it on my own time outside of work.<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Yes, but there were a lot of skills that I would deem as professional competencies. By the time I left the agency, I was the most senior designer, so I would have been project managing a lot. I would have been dealing with lots of different stakeholders; printers, copywriters, photographers, other designers. So that is a very helpful skill. <\/span><\/p>\n Having visual design as a skill definitely helps, but I don’t feel that it’s absolutely critical. <\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n Working on user interfaces and stuff is just a part of what I do. A lot of it is thinking about the experience and dealing with stakeholders and teasing out problems. So in terms of transferable skills, I would say predominantly it was those sorts of professional competencies. I think they were sort of crucial.<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Definitely research techniques, user flows and stuff like that. I would have done that type of thing but we learned it in an \u201cindustry best practice\u201d way on the course, which was great. So industry best practice in conducting research, laying out flows and prototyping<\/a>. I would have done a bit of prototyping myself but I definitely optimised my skills through the course. Research and analysis of research were really important and the course broadened my understanding of those too. <\/span><\/p>\n My understanding was very small and limited and the course really blew all those areas open for me. It has really given me an understanding of the industry best practice and I think that was the best thing about it.\u00a0<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n I found it fine and that was probably because of my visual design background. But the advice that I got at the end of the course was really good. I used to think it was a case of just having a PDF and not having a website, had it not been pointed out to me at the end of the course that you really need to have a digital online presence. <\/span><\/p>\n It seems obvious now but it just wasn’t the world I was in. I would have thought that I could just put a PDF together and email that on.<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\nWhat was your career like just before you made the switch to UX?<\/b><\/h3>\n
What research did you do into different UX courses?<\/b><\/h3>\n
Why did you choose to study with the UX Design Institute?<\/strong><\/h3>\n
Were there any transferable skills from graphic design to UX<\/a>?
\n<\/b><\/h3>\nWhich parts of the course do you think filled in gaps in your knowledge in particular?<\/b><\/h3>\n
How was the experience of building the portfolio<\/a>?<\/b>
\n<\/span><\/h3>\nYou\u2019ve got a job with Global Payments Inc.<\/a> since completing the course. How was the job hunt?<\/b><\/h3>\n