Why Design
I wrote this in the beginning of 2017. I hadn’t started college yet and had no professional experience in the area of design (or whatsoever as a matter-of-fact). I think it can be inspiring for all students who are thinking about pursuing a career in design.
At the time I was 17 years old and found myself explaining my career option a lot for friends and family. I’m sure the reality is no different nowadays for people who choose design. I was pretty confident that I would lean more to digital product design, and that has really panned out so far. Without further ado, here it is:
I’ve been infatuated with technology for as long as I can remember. The experience that digital products deliver has always fascinated me. How a similar idea is imagined and developed in different ways, sometimes achieving incredible response from the users, and sometimes receiving large amounts of criticism or falling into oblivion.
For me there was only one area I could imagine working in: technology. Unfortunately, for most people, that means only one thing: learning to code and getting a degree in computer science. I was reminded of that every time someone saw my enthusiasm while using devices and inferred I would like to become a programmer. This idea was so widespread on my family when I was growing up that I never took the time to explore more options. But the truth is that I was never really interested about what was happening on the background, so spending my days writing code was never an appealing choice.
I was 14 years old when “What I’m going to do with my life?” fears first started, so that’s when I prompted myself to explore career choices. First I realised that what I truly liked was what the user saw on the screen, the interface, and how the user interacted with it. Sooner than later a bright option appeared: “UI/UX Design”. It was perfect for me since it was precisely about what I liked in technology. It’s a new career, and practically no one I talked to knew about it. So that brought on a new challenge: how am I going to explain what I want to do with my life?
Eventually, I found a perfect metaphor. Imagine that an app is a building, in this scenario the architect would be the designer and the structural engineer would be the programmer. UI stands for user interface, and UX for user experience. In short, UI is about making the app look nice and UX is about making it intuitive (easy to use). After deciding what I probably would like to do for the rest of my life, somethings reassured that I’d made the right choice.
Some of the things that most bothered me when using digital products were exactly those an UI/UX designer was responsible for. I practically never read a manual, and I know most people don’t. It’s clear to me the designer failed its job when someone needs to refer to a manual to use a product, and that’s something I will always consider when creating. Another thing that frustrates me is when I run into an app that doesn’t reach its full potential, so my goal while entering this field is to provide apps that offer users what they need in the simpler way possible. Visual acumen is also something that I’ve never lacked.
When the first “smartphones” appeared, I knew there was space for something better, and that those simple apps distributed by carriers could evolve into something amazing. Not long afterwards came the iPhone, and one year later, the App Store. Frequently I think of some minor — not so apparent — improvements that can be done on a specific product, and in a future update they tackle just that.
My college starts next month, and I have chosen design without a drop of fear about having made the wrong choice. I hope to share here what I learn along the way.
A quick explanation: in the end I reference a channel of some sort where I would publish regular updates. Unfortunately there never was one, but I’m hoping to finally change this.
It really is nostalgic reading this again. There are many topics on which I have changed my mind in the last few years, but I am more sure about my career choice than ever. Every day a new article comes out reminding of just how wide a field design is.
There were many challenges and learning happening through the last couple of years, and I already have a couple in mind to share with the community. To conclude this #TBT, I would like to point out a few observations about what I wrote in 2017:
For me there was only one area I could imagine working in: technology. Unfortunately, for most people, that means only one thing: learning to code and getting a degree in computer science.
I still think design lives in the shadows. For users it’s only natural, but that also brings a long-term problem for the health of our industry. Everyone experiences the work we do but, at least from my perspective, not everyone is aware we play a significant part in the tech space.
You see big Silicon Valley companies backing numerous efforts for teaching code, but design as a career usually doesn’t receive nearly the same level of attention from them. Maybe this is merely proportional to the number of coding positions, but I believe there’s a long way to go in making design more widespread even in technology.
Some of the things that most bothered me when using digital products were exactly those an UI/UX designer was responsible for.
The reason why certain things simply don’t get fixed is becoming more clear to me as I dive deeper into the day-to-day life of companies big and small. Some of the problems that I encounter really are excusable, but there are a handful that I think can be easily solved with just a bit more of care. These are the ones that I’m looking forward to explore the most here.
UI stands for user interface, and UX for user experience. In short, UI is about making the app look nice and UX is about making it intuitive (easy to use).
I still think this is one of the simplest explanations one can give about our job, together with the metaphor that I explained. Usability often gets tangled with the concept of UX, and at the time I still hadn’t grasped the significant difference.
Addressing the old job title non-sense that we are so used to discussing, I no longer feel like the most appropriate is UI/UX Designer. UX encompasses UI, so I’m currently preferring to go by UX Designer.
One thing that I did not make clear on this text was that UX fundamentals could be applied to n number of contexts, not just digital products. Digital products were all I could think at the time, and such possibilities were just not apparent to me at the time when I wrote it.
Thank you to everyone that read this far. A few days ago I hit a year working for Verve Works, a design company based in Brazil. Sort of feels full-circle to be writing this now.
Please appreciate and leave feedback, it truly means a lot.
