‘People to pixels: how I got started in the UX field’
Like most UX Designers, 📈 My path was not a linear one.
My time in San Francisco as a Studio Manager for a start-up called ‘Printstagram’ 📲 was certainly influential. Now named Social Print Studio , I remember watching some of the best coders and creatives in the country make an app and thinking to myself, ‘How can I get in on this?’
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A Taste of Tech
It was inspiring to see a team who could work hard and play hard. Being around that all day is contagious, and people who are that passionate about their work are definitely co-workers you want to have.
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Software City
I learned so much from just living in San Fransisco alone. Nearly everyone I met was dead set on changing the world with their products and ideas. I absorbed as much as I could.
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Customer Success
I realized not everyone in tech works with code.. that it takes a team of talents (Client Service reps, QA folks, Biz Dev managers) to make a company successful. And of course, I always had eyed up a Designer role.
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Seeing our Work
Above all, the most rewarding feeling was watching our product reach real users. I was far away from home but my friends across the US were ordering our prints and posters through our app. I was apart of something that worked, and worked well.
But for me it was accidental, after a long and epic road trip back East — I got hired 🎊 at an Ad-tech company in downtown Philly as an Office Manager. That year at Cadent I prided myself on making sure our space used all if its potential through physical and digital design. I strived to make things 📩 easy-to-understand and enjoyable.
Even now I love Event Design and People Operations.
👌🏼 Discovering when folks are in that sweet spot of comfortability and happiness is the essential goal.
💭 People shouldn’t just get to A to B — They should have a great experience while arriving there.
I started out designing materials for events like our annual Tech Summit, created company-wide newsletters like🎙 ‘The Broadcast’, drafted Chess and Ping Pong tournaments 🏓, orchestrated ‘Bring Your Child to Work Day’ across multiple locations.. you name it. My enthusiasm paid off and I was offered a Design internship.
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New Hire Emails
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Bring Your Child to Work Materials
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![Bring Your Child to Work Agenda]()
Bring Your Child to Work Agenda
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Food Drive Posters
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Tech Summit Agenda
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Chess Tournament Bracket
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'The Broadcast' Newsletters
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Company Benefit Infographics
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'Puzzle Weekly' Quizzes
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Pi Day Crossword Email
For the next 6 months, I worked as an Office Manager and UX apprentice on one of our best development teams.
Before moving officially onto the Product department, I was asked to complete a bootcamp online which was paid for by the company 📚 I chose General Assembly’s UX Design Immersive Online course and highly recommend it to anyone starting out. What I value most during this training period was my time with my mentors.. 🎓
I began by attending daily stand-ups ⏱ where I learned the basics of how a design sprint can help developers pace features and test them in a short period of time. One thing my mentor and I did in the early stages of our apprenticeship was shadowing sessions. This meant he’d see how I worked on tasks through observation and could guide me — From shortcut keys to best practices, I slowly ramped up.
My few first months taught me that good design is invisible and usually very hard to spot .. 🔎 great designers make it look easy.
I studied on my own by attending Tech conferences and following leaders in the industry locally and globally. In and out of the office, I ask a lot of questions because I want to become the best design asset I can be for my teams. Although I was an apprentice at Cadent, the company gave me the equal opportunity to try things out and contribute to actual client projects just like my colleagues.
By the new year the company offered me to come onboard as a Full-time Designer.. 🎉 I happily accepted and am now practicing my craft everyday with my coworkers while attending local UX events to sharpen my skills.
And the best part about it? There’s always more to learn.