The first time experiencing a layoff is scary as hell but the way to get through it is to never view any role as your forever job. Whether you get laid off or resign, you won’t be there until retirement. So this means that you need to prepare for that. To help with that, I created a guide you can use. You can download it here.
Read MoreFor the past year or so, I’ve been asking myself “What do you want? You’re making decent money, you don’t need any more things. What are you doing this for? Do you even want to keep climbing the design career ladder? What are you working towards?” It’s interesting how having a near death health emergency has helped me finally have an answer.
Read MoreA lot of talk about web3 and crypto has been going on all over social media, blogs, and youtube. Some content says it’s a scam, others say it’s going to change the web as we know it, others say it’s terrible for the environment, and others are neutral about it. I won’t be trying to persuade you in any direction. I think we should learn more about new concepts and then form our own opinion on it. I will preface this with, I don’t know everything about web3 but I do understand blockchain and web3 concepts from working in previous startups that focused on using it for their tokens. I want to keep this simple and expand on it in multiple posts because it’s a lot of information to take in at one time.
Read MoreBurn out shows up in different ways depending on who you are and for me, it showed up in the fact that all I wanted to do after work or on the weekends was sleep. Something had to give. A lot of things had to give. I couldn’t find the energy to create for tech anymore outside of my job and a few tweets. So I chose myself. I just wanted to make it through the rest of the year with my sanity in tact. I never really took the time to “mourn” the fact that I’m in a place where I have the means to enjoy life but the world’s circumstances have put it to a halt to some extent. I needed to let out my frustration and anger instead of forcing myself to say “ this is fine” and bury myself in work to mask it.
Read MoreIt’s been almost 2 years since I “fell into” becoming a manager and while I’m still learning quite a bit, here’s one of the things I’ve done that works for my team and that is helping them navigate their career path…The main factor that I always keep in mind is that as a manager I want to put my team in the best position possible to not only be successful in their current role but also in future roles regardless of the company they work for.
Read MoreAs rough as the pandemic has been on me mentally at times, it’s allowed me to restructure my life in a way that lets me explore more of my interests outside of UX Design. Don’t get me wrong, I love what I do. I truly enjoy design, managing and building out a design team and establishing design processes and the foundation for the company. I actually didn’t think I would initially. However, I think experiencing this pandemic and feeling like we’re constantly living through a “historical event” combined with feeling as though I wasn’t living up to my own expectations was making me question my career choices.”
Read MoreOne of the hardest lessons for me to learn and that I still have moments struggling with is being ok with slowing down. What I mean by this is, I have a habit of feeling as though I’m not doing enough. I’m not sure if that’s a form of imposter syndrome, feeling as though I’m not utilizing my time to the best of my ability ( feeling lazy) or wanting to achieve my goals as fast as I can. Either way, I realized that living this way isn’t exactly healthy. I don’t put that amount of pressure on my team and I shouldn’t do it to myself. So how am I managing my own life while trying to be a good manager to my team?
Read MoreI'm currently in the process of managing a design team and hiring for it. It’s exciting, I’m nervous, and there’s a lot that I will be learning along the way. Every action I’ve been taking from mentoring, allocating work, providing feedback, advocating for salary raises , and setting up the interview process has been intentional. I want to be the manager I wish I had throughout my career.
Read MoreFor those that are new to design or an unfamiliar with what a design trend is , design trends are patterns/ layouts etc that you start to consistently see across products. Some examples of this is how profile pictures became circle shaped instead of square, parallax and gradients. Design trends can help us establish commonalities and expected functionality for users which can help make products more modern, delightful and intuitive. So it can seem as though following popular design trends can be an automatic go to when designing/ re-designing for a product but that’s not always the case.
Read MoreRecently, I’ve been looped back into a client project due to COVID-19. The client is a large retailer and most of their sales come from in store customer purchases. Due to the virus, many of their customers are protecting themselves (which is a good thing) by not venturing into the malls to shop and try on the jewelry. However, this translates into a huge sales decline for the client. Unfortunately, they did not realize how having a website tailored to specific segments of users would be. Usually, we don’t factor pandemics and viruses into our design strategy and that is no fault of our own. We’re not faced with pandemics regularly on such a large scale and you can only prepare for it but so much.
Read MoreWhile our goal as UX designers are to create solutions to user pain points by making the complex simple. Is there a possibility that we are making interfaces too simplistic that it harms the user in the long run because it can overlook basic human factors? What I mean by this is, are we eliminating the user having multiple options to accomplish their goal, if the main option suddenly becomes unavailable? What if by limiting options, their lives are more at risk. This may be a cause of overlooking to factor in how an interface can be navigated when users are in a state of panic. We’ve seen a “Break in case of emergency” glass case in stairwells but I think it may be time to incorporate them in other ways.
Read MoreThroughout the many projects I have contributed to, I have seen websites that are engaging and beautiful but not necessarily user friendly or designed in a manner that supports content growth. When this happens, a webpage can easily become confusing, convoluted and patchwork of content that leads to user drop off. While there are various methods to streamline a website, they don’t always adapt to or account for the multiple user types that will be using their site nor short development deadlines. What is a possible solution that takes these factors into account while still meeting business goals? Component Libraries.
Read MoreI’ve presented to clients plenty of times but it was my first time presenting to people I had never been in a meeting with about that specific project. I had less than 24 hours to pull it together and less than 48 hours to have the designs completed. Is that insane? Yes. Is it best practice? No, not at all. Can you pull it together and present to your client in a professional manner with less than a day’s notice? Absolutely.
Read MoreAnnotations are detailed notes that explain how an asset functions. Think of them as footnotes for your wireframes. They help the development team build the site correctly as well as help others looking at the wireframes have an idea of what the site out come will be.
From that definition, annotations sound simple. For the most part, they are. What makes them difficult is that they can be written in a way that isn’t very clear and where the target reader has been forgotten.
Read MoreAs juniors, you’re trying to learn as much as you can, make as little mistakes as possible ( it’s from being nervous about the outcome. Mistakes happen to all of us. Don’t stress it too much, just try to fix it.) and not “shake the table”. However, there will come a time when a team member or a client will request a task from you that should not be done, is not a good idea or you have no authority to do. You will need to say no.
Based on the experiences I’ve had, here’s a few ways to do it professionally, set boundaries and feel confident that you will remain employed.
Read MoreWhile I don’t freelance much anymore, I have learned quite a bit of lessons about establishing payment, pricing my work, who maintains ownership over the assets and what happens to the work when payment is no longer able to be made.
A few years ago, my work was stolen and to be honest, it’s one of the reasons I don’t freelance much unless I feel that the project is a good idea. Here are a few things to keep in mind when you are freelancing to get experience…
I wrote this years ago. It blows my mind to see how I’ve grown since then. So why am I posting this here? Well, I want to be completely transparent about my journey getting into this industry and staying in it. I never want to give off the perception that this was easy and overnight. Just remember that if you are starting out, you will eventually reach your goal.
Read MoreI wrote this earlier this year in April on my old blog and though it has been a few months since then, it still holds true in my opinion. Since it is getting closer to being the end of the year, that means performance reviews and mapping out what your next steps to advancing will be. Getting to the next level in your career takes work but it’s easier to get there when you know what to you need to do.
Read MoreIn case you missed it, I held my first AMA on Twitter last week. As you know, threads can be easily lost and deleted on Twitter. The questions I received were so good that I decided to put them into a blog post. Think of this post as a way of getting to a little more about me, how I got into UX, what other resources I used to get started and how I found clients when I was a freelancer.
Read MoreThe reality is that no two days will be alike. So I’m going to walk you through what my day is like when a project kickoff is happening, when the project is in discovery phase, wireframing phase, and right before a project is handed off to a client.
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