UX Career with Kirill V

Monica is a UX Researcher @ Amazon.

Monica talks about her career journey in research. We touch on the challenges she faced doing remote studies during COVID and what it really takes to be a researcher. She shares her favourite research methods, tips for those new to research, and advice for designers on working well with researchers. 

We also dive into how to convince people that research is crucial for their projects and talk about whether AI could ever take over a researcher's job.

Enjoy 🤙

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Anthony is an award-winning Product Designer @ Amazon, author, educator, inventor, and mentor.

Anthony talks about his career journey and experience in creating board games. We discuss UX bootcamps, thoughts on AI's role in UX, job search strategies, and portfolio and resume tips. To wrap it up Anthony shares his experience writing his first book “The Art and Science of UX Design”.

Enjoy 🤙

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Kirk and Suzanne are creative leaders and co-founders of Design Unicorn, an agency on a mission to empower designers and agencies to harness the transformative potential of AI.

They share their career stories and their new venture - Design Unicorn - where they share the latest AI developments specifically in relation to the Design world. Obviously, we discuss AI and its impact on the future of the Design profession, and whether AI could understand psychology and be creative. Also, we discuss the risks of companies over-optimizing for conversion rates and ROI, how you can use ChatGPT to prepare for job interviews, and much more.

Enjoy 🤙

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Jacco is a UX Design Manager @ Elsevier, a large IT services company creating solutions for researchers and healthcare professionals.

Jacco shares his career story and how he transitioned into UX leadership, the difference between management and leadership and skills you should be working on to grow in this direction. Also, we discuss the challenges of UX managers, AI and the future of UX design. In addition, Jacco shares resume, interviewing, and networking advice for UX design candidates, and much more.

Enjoy 🤙

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Mukul is an AR/VR Designer @ Amazon.

Mukul shares his career story and getting into the world of augmented and virtual reality, inventing new interaction patterns and the challenge of not having common patterns to rely on, prototyping tools for AR and VR experiences, the future of VR applications, metaverse, how to get into AR/VR design world as a designer, and much more.

Enjoy 🤙

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Sofia is a Learning Experience Designer at Amazon in India.

Sofia shares her career journey and the transition from a non-tech job as a classroom teacher to a tech job as an instructional designer. We talk about learning experience designers and skills they need and the design process they use. Also, Sofia shares the challenges of designing for international audiences, tips for keeping audiences engages, and much more. Enjoy 🤙 

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Fernando is a UX Design Manager @ Volvo Cars in Sweden.

Fernando shares his career journey and transition from a designer to a manager. We discuss the challenges of touch UI in cars, autonomous driving, and the joy of the driving experience. Also, Fernando talks about what it means to be a manager, gives job search advice during tough market times, tips on presenting to leadership, and much more. Enjoy 🤙

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Amy is a UX Manager @ Canonical, the developer and publisher of the most popular Linux platform Ubuntu.

Amy shares her career story and how she transitioned into UX from engineering, work culture differences between Thailand and Germany, learning to say no, experience working in an early stage startup, transitioning from senior UX designer to a UX manager, remote work culture, resume and interviewing advice, and much more. Enjoy 🤙

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Bahar Espiritu is a senior UX Designer @ Amazon (at the time of the recording).

Bahar shares her career story and how she transitioned into UX from hardware engineering, learning about inclusive design at Disney, diversity of work cultures and communication style, being yourself, clearly articulating your impact in interviews and portfolios, designing for automation, and much more. Enjoy 🤙

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Dacheng Cheng is a senior Front-End Engineer @ Amazon.

Dacheng shares his career and entrepreneurial journey, insights from the enterprise UX, and computer literacy in different generations. Also, we discuss the current AI tools' potential and problems, and how Designers should be collaborating with Engineers. In addition, we talk about the mere-exposure effect, building trust with and without data, and much more. Enjoy 👍

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Paul Bryant is a senior UX Designer @ Amazon.

Paul shares his career journey, work culture differences between USA and Europe, and teaching empathy. Also, we discuss behavioural psychology, AI future, and learning new tools. In addition, we talk about the ageism, understanding your natural talents, and much more. Enjoy 👍

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Stéphanie Walter is a UX Researcher & Designer specializing in enterprise UX and mobile.

Stéphanie shares her career journey, the pros and cons of designing for enterprise, and cultural differences at work. She talks about experimenting with AI tools and their shortcomings. Also, Stéphanie shares advice on tapping into the hidden job market, why she chose PDF format for her portfolio, and much more. Enjoy 🤙

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Mitch Clements is a Mentor, Speaker, and UX Manager @ SimpleNexus.

Mitch shares his career journey, switching from an Android engineer to UX. He shares what a personal brand means for an employee, and how you can influence change in a company. Also, we talk about networking by helping design communities, actionable job search advice, and much more. Enjoy 👍

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Blake Fisher is Product Leader and Product Ops Evangelist

Blake shares his journey, switching careers from journalism to product, and the nature of Product ops. Also, we discuss how AI will impact Product Manager jobs, how designers should partner with product managers, what influences roadmap prioritization, and much more. Enjoy 🤙

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Brad Clark is the Director of Talent Acquisition @ Article.

Brad shares his career journey and entrepreneurial endeavours. We discuss the biggest challenges in the recruitment industry, how companies should look at the employment gaps, the t-shirt sizing secret to filling jobs, resume tips, using hustle to stand out from others, interesting thoughts on UX bootcamps, and much more. Enjoy 🤙

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Sarah Donaldson is the Lead Product Designer @ Fullscript.

Sarah shares how she got into the industry by accident, what is the difference between an intermediate and a senior designer, and what you can do to start positioning yourself as one. We also talk about what makes recruiters ignore candidates just because of their job application, and Sarah’s expectations of a portfolio, resume, interviewing, and asking good interview questions. And lastly, we touch on the topic of Design Ops and what makes a good design lead.

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Josh is a freelance UX designer from Vancouver, Canada.

Josh talks about his career journey and how he transitioned from engineering to UX. He speaks to the differences between working as a consultant and as a permanent employee. Also, we discuss the challenges of building a community, and also the benefits they can bring. In addition, Josh gives valuable advice on starting out and some tips to increase your chances of getting through the door.

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Rachel is a Senior UX Designer, currently working at a FAANG company.

We talk about how Rachel got into the UX field, how her education in Chemistry and Business helped her gain skills that made her a better designer, the love of complexity working with internal tools and a ton of constraints, why it is important to be authentic to your true self, tailoring your resume to the job you want, what portfolio design pisses her off, finding new projects to add to your case studies, common mistakes during white-boarding exercises, and a lot more.

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Nick is a Senior User Researcher.

We talk about his origin story and the aha moment when he was watching users not being able to figure out how to use their product, differences working on internal and external products, his key takeaways from a 10-year-long career, one of the biggest challenges for researchers - how to manage stakeholders and some strategies how you can do it better, portfolios and if you need one for job applications, what makes a great researcher, and much more.

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Christopher Behr is the Design Lead @ Impala, a remote-first B2B startup in the travel industry.

We talk about Chris’s journey in the Design industry and some key takeaways. We discuss the pros and cons of hiring generalists and specialists and why so many companies look for unicorns. Also, Chris shares what kind of side projects he finds more valuable in a portfolio, gives some tips on how to design your resume and case studies, and many more valuable tips on getting a job in UX.

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Ashish is the Head of Product @ Visualping, a website change monitoring service for businesses and also people.

Ashish shares how he got into Product from consulting and Project Management, and educates me on job titles and roles in the Product Management world. We also talk about the art of influencing and building trust with stakeholders and leadership, and what framework Ashish used to get buy-in to work on a project that helped him get on the path of product management. Then, he shares the biggest challenge of context-switching between strategic and tactical mindsets. And from the point of view of a person hiring designers, key answers he is looking for when reviewing candidates. And at the end, Ashish shares some insights about the Design team at his current company Visualping.

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David is a Senior Technical Recruiter helping tech companies find candidates.

We talk about his story of getting into the industry, how recruitment agencies work, the advantages and disadvantages of working with a recruiter, why they are being vague with some opportunities and why candidates are being ghosted, tips on optimizing your resume and LinkedIn profile, and many more insights from the life of a recruiter.

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Irina is the Product Design Manager @ Clio, a Vancouver-based tech company in the legal space.

We talk about her journey from journalism to design leadership, the valuable experiences from previous careers, what she is looking for in resumes and portfolios, and how you should tell the story for a project. We also discuss the case study structure, why you should start it by framing the problem, and much more. Enjoy 🤙

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Stan is the Director of Experience Design @ Domain 7, a design agency in Vancouver, Canada.

We talk about his journey in design, how he transitioned to the management role, how to stand out, the value of previous experiences when switching careers, tips on portfolios and resumes, and the future of collaboration between product designers and product managers. Stan also shares the team structure, design and interview process they currently use at Domain7, and a whole lot more interesting insights for designers looking for a job. Enjoy 🤙

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This is a continuation of my conversation with Janos. We talk about the future of accessibility as a practice, the assistive technologies, and the role of accessibility specialists. Also, we discuss the most common objections from the business side and how he handles them.

Janos is an experienced certified web accessibility specialist who spent the last 5 years driving accessibility efforts in a large financial institution.

We talk about his story of getting into the field, why inclusive design is important, how you can start learning the basics, the challenges of retrofitting existing internal tools to satisfy accessibility requirements, and a lot more.  Also, Janos shares a bunch of easy tips and tools for designers who want to create accessible products and experiences. We got so much content, that we couldn't fit all the information into 1 recording, so we are going to get the second session focusing on the future of accessibility in design and common objections against it.

Rabiya is an experienced leader who has led several design teams and hired many designers. We talk about her journey starting from kinesiology to becoming a Head of UX at a digital product agency, the importance of showing your personality as a candidate, the value of being a curious person, tips on adding better case studies to your portfolio, and how designing for emotions will become even more important in future.

Phil is a creative design and UX leader with broad and diverse experience working with startups, government agencies, and large enterprises. We talk about Phil’s journey to becoming a UX lead managing a team of 12. We discuss the importance of being authentic when presenting your work, the issue with over-designed resumes, the value of showing transferrable skills from previous careers, why illustrating projects solving real-world problems is more important than sleekly-designed imaginary ones, and a lot more takeaways about UX career.

Sarah is a senior UX professional with a lot of experience in designing products, managing teams, and now teaching a UX course. We talk about building relationships on social media, volunteering and partnering with other people to work on projects for your portfolio, what you should show in the case studies, the importance of cover letters, insights about working with recruiters to hire designers, and many more topics on the UX career.

Andy shares his story from getting curious about UX design to launching his own design boutique agency Futureform. We talk about having an open mind to working on different kinds of products across diverse industries and problem spaces, understanding your strengths and passions and highlighting them in your resume, being honest when presenting your work and being clear on what was your particular role in a project. Also, we talk about the future of the profession and how important it is and will be to have the “Keep learning and be ready to change” mindset, and a lot more. 

Vince has more than 15 years of experience building products and managing design teams for brands like Costco, Walmart, Air Canada, Staples, and more. Vince talks about his origin story and how he become a design director. We discuss the differences between skills needed for a manager and for an individual contributor, the importance of believing in yourself, and why a generic resume is a red flag for the hiring manager. Vince shares his thoughts on the value of storytelling during interviews and the grim future of UI design.

Jaybe is a senior design leader with over 25 years of experience building products and services and leading teams. This is an episode from the “Q&A With Design Managers” series. Jaybe shares his story of becoming a design leader and gives advice on how to stand out from others and the common mistakes he sees in applications and portfolios. He also shares excellent insights on what hiring managers find important and how they think. Also, we talk about empathy-building as one of the key activities that will be hard to automate, why companies are not rushing to hire junior designers, and a lot more.

Mark is a UX practitioner with over 10 years of experience and is currently working as a UX director at a digital innovation studio. This is an episode from the “Q&A with Design Managers” series. Mark shares his story, his thoughts on how to stand out from others and his 15-page resume, what makes a good portfolio and resume, the future of the UX design job, switching careers, and a lot more.

Joyce is a senior UX professional with more than 10 years of experience across different industries. This is an episode from the “Q&A with Design Managers” series. Joyce shares her thoughts on how to stand out from others, what makes a good portfolio and resume, the future of the UX design profession, the pros and cons of UX bootcamps, and a lot more.