The Second 40 Hr. Job

Wassup Saints! Here’s a transparent blog (sn: they all are honestly lol. If they weren’t I wouldn’t waste my time writing to you all.) I’m coming at you live with an update as I sit here and contemplate where I want to go in my career trajectory. I’m just shy of two years in the game (time has literally flown) and sitting back to take account of what it all means. Two pertinent conversations come to mind. The first conversation was one I had with my favorite boss (hey OG!!) and I remember it like it was yesterday. I was struggling through an architectural design decision and he was asking me a ton of questions I didn’t know the answer to. He then asked me if I thought my learning stopped at 40 hours? He went on to tell me that when he first started out in his career he would end up spending a decent amount of time after hours perfecting his craft. He put the time in until he got to a knowledgeable place and continued to put in the time after that. That conversation replays in my head on the regular. 

The next conversation took place with one of my architecture professors during my third year of college. I’m not sure what prompted us but we asked for advice on how to best prepare for our future careers. She mentioned, “No matter what, don’t let your skillset get old.” So as I sit here coming up on two years in this new career I’m having a sort of come to Jesus moment. Like girl, where your head at? Where do you want to go in this career now? How we doing fareal? And I can say there are places where I want to expand my knowledge for sure. User experience is such a broad category with many avenues to specialize in, but I’m at a place where I’ve zoned in on where and what I want to explore first and how.

So here’s the truth of it…I’m taking a page out of my favorite boss’s book and hijacking my second 40 hour work week. That’s the one that starts after you clock out of work just in case you were lost lol. Here’s my why though. Thus far in my career I feel I’ve had a good baby introduction into a few different avenues within user experience. I’ve gotten a chance to get some good research under my belt and a dollop of design time. Now that I’ve seen a few things it turns out I’m still the same girl at heart–and that is a designer through and through. I. Have. Loved. Design. My. Whole. Life. I recall getting introduced to the world of Adobe where Photoshop, Illustrator, and Indesign ran my life in college. In college we had to pick up new programs and skills all the time and we just did it. The parts I loved most were being able to come up with something out of literally nothing and having this place where “No” didn’t exist. If I could think of it, I could design it and I want to live in that space again.

So my plan is to make more opportunities to enhance my visual design skills on and off the clock. (Sidenote: I know there are some folks that won’t subscribe to this plan because you put in your 40 hours and leave. I get it and that’s great. Do you! However, the level that I want to be at calls for a bit more of my time so I’m moving accordingly😀.) I plan on achieving that by doing the following:

• Consuming content daily that will strengthen my visual design skills - currently I’m exploring Dan’s Figma’s Advanced Skills to keep my hands in Figma 

• Opening Figma each day and complete one #DailyUI challenge 

• Watching an endless amount of time lapse videos just to get an idea of other people’s work flows which should sharpen or shorten my own

• Looking into volunteer opportunities with a visual design focus so that I can bolster those skills while increasing my network

• Buying books centered around UX design so I can keep getting an idea for the theory behind good design and visual styles

• Talking to y’all about it all because well….accountability

Alright, that’s the plan and I’m thinking the more I get into these habits I’ll come back with updates. I’m also thinking this would be a great start for anyone else trying to break into experience design as well. I remember it like it was yesterday, the constant barrage of “no’s” I received when job hunting and how much emphasis was placed on the experience needed just to get the experience I was looking for from a first job. So we’re still in this together. I’d love to hear what your plans are for making yourself a better designer, developer, etc. Feel free to let me know in the comments but as always wishing you all the best! 

My best,
Kiera

The Invincible Tech Industry

Wassup people,

I’m coming live at you from being a year plus in and navigating what I’m sure you all have heard about - the tech layoffs. I remember a couple years ago hearing about the tech industry and this sort of untouchable nature around it. To the non-tech world, this field sounded like the nirvana. You would constantly hear about the benefits, the pay increase, and plenty of other perks. Then there was this idea that all you had to do was make it in the door and you would be on your way. I remember accepting those ideas as plain truth and it was never something I questioned. I just knew I needed to make the jump. 

So fast forward to my finally being in the industry last year, it came as a surprise that the untouchable industry I had heard so much about was being played with. My first sighting of the layoffs came during Afrotech in 2022. One day we were all in Austin, TX shaking hands and smiling and the next day we started to hear about the layoffs. For example, recruiters that were working the events got emails that their employment was being terminated. The news from some of my friends followed up shortly after and suddenly Afrotech went from being like a reunion of black faces to a somber, determined career expo. The saddest of desperate LinkedIn posts followed for months after that. Finally while I had watched everything from a distance, March would bring about fear-inducing emails from my company right to my doorstep.

I’ll pause here to say architecture did a good job with educating me on how to spot a layoff season from a mile away. I was laid off from one of my first jobs right out of school and that was my introduction to the concept of being let go. The jobs that followed highlighted other indicators to pay attention to as well. So when things got a bit interesting at my current place of work I was not surprised because the uncertainty was there. My current company is also very transparent with the state of the company and that has been amazing, eye opening, and grounding. Back to the story.

So after the first set of layoffs everything has been redefined. I sort of woke up and saw I was vulnerable and what do you do with that right? It’s scary. What I’ve deduced is that you find yourself upskilling. You look for ways to grow. You take on tasks that stretch you and keep your current set of skills sharp. You update your resume and portfolio. You look for a side hustle to better insulate your income just in case. You savor coworker meetings because you just never know. The whole nine you just do. And that’s where I am.

I am extremely grateful because God has helped me hurdle each wave. I’ve also accepted that no matter what happens it will work out in the end because it just has to. So I want to end by encouraging myself and others to hang in there. Times are weird so wherever you find yourself press forward. To my folks attempting to break into the industry I’m also sending you lots of love too. Hang in there. I’ve had a pretty cool year and making it to the other side of that journey has been worth it but continue to diversify your skills. 

I’m excited for better news but this is real life and where we are. I’d love to know where you all are in the process and how you’ve adjusted. In the meantime I'm still hopeful for us alll.

Happier dreams Saints

Kiera

My First 6 Months

Hey Friends, 

**Disclaimer: I wrote this blog a few months back right around my 6 month mark and even though we’re a bit removed from that time at this point the rules still apply. Back to the story now.

What can I say? In short, it’s been six months. Back in May I took on my first account as a Senior Experience Designer and it’s been a journey of learning ever since. I had officially made the jump from architectural design to experience design and to be honest I was unsure of what to expect. Well I take that back. I did expect to be confused and lost in the sauce with everything. However, here’s the rundown of my first 6 months in retrospect. 

Here are the top things I’ve learned.

1. You can do it. Even if it means you’re doing it uncomfortably the entire time you still can do it and I can attest to this. I’ve been uncomfortable this ENTIRE time. I’ve never felt secure in what I was doing at any point but I produced each and every time.

2. Being a consultant really means you’re a person lending your expertise but that boils down to someone giving their best judgment on things. You and they are still human. I say this because I came into this expecting to be perfect, but what I heard in meetings were subject matter experts providing their best educated opinions and testing it out to see if it worked out.

3. The difference between agile and waterfall. Now I’ll admit I’m still learning the difference between this in real time but I get the big picture of the difference haha. As told to me by my performance partner in architectural speak so I could really see it… the mindset of waterfall is much like architecture. You put all this work into documentation that results in a building and you address things that might be wrong after it’s done being built. The agile mindset is like starting on the kitchen of a house and choosing between moving on to the bathroom or fine tuning the kitchen a bit more because you want to get specific about the appliances. You have options and you’re always updating things in a cyclical way instead of one and done. 

4. Tech jargon. Now coming into this I felt like my first couple of months were filled with acronyms and phrasing I’d never heard before. I mean I literally started a running list of acronyms to ask my team about after our meetings. Here are some of them to name a few: discovery, inception, retro, delivery, spike. Fun fact, I still get hit with acronyms today. This hasn’t changed haha. 

5. I’m learned how to conduct research and I got to see the importance of it. Now I’m a designer in heart and mind, but the project I was on lent itself to very little of that. Instead, I had research and I really had to dive into it. I now know about creating research plans, conversation guides, how to moderate an interview, conduct research synthesis, and the like.

6. Bonus learn: It is always ok to ask questions. I credit my comfortability in this uncomfortable area to architecture and my favorite boss (hey OG!). Every unanswered question in architecture resulted in some part of the building being built incorrectly and that would always result in a change order. That meant money had to be spent to correct it. I hated being at the source of that mistake so to avoid that… you learned to ask questions. I’d rather know the answer than let my team go in blind on something I could’ve asked about. This is no different in tech. I also have yet to kick off a series of questioning that didn’t result in someone else asking a question of their own. So in short…always ask the question.

7. Finally, a fact I've observed…My coworkers are amazing and seeing other black people in tech is phenomenal.

That’s all I have for now, but I’m hanging in there. More to come soon.

Best Dreamers,

Kiera

How I Landed My First Job in UI/UX

Hey friends! Let’s talk about how I landed my first job as an experience designer!

For those of you that are new here I’ll introduce myself. My name is Kiera and I made a career transition from an architectural designer to an experience designer (aka UI/UX designer). I have been within the tech field for 9 months now and it has been a complete whirlwind. While some of the day to day resembles pieces of my architectural career, it is a FAR cry from anything that I’ve ever experienced or done. However, let’s go back and talk about why you’re here today.

You want to know how I actually got my first UI/UX job with no coding background, no bootcamp, and with no traditional experience right? Right.

I’ll tell you that ultimately making a transition like this was hard. I believe in God (Hallelu!), and I know this was nothing but Him moving on my behalf. Honestly. Truly. I’ll also add a disclaimer here to say, what worked for me is literally just what worked for me. All of it is hard and everyone’s journey is different. With me coming from an architectural background I found that a fair amount of my experience was transferable to that of a UI/UX designer, but that not might not be the case for you and that’s ok. Do whatever you need to do to break into the field. How you got in doesn’t matter beyond that point. As for me though, I knew I didn’t want to complete a bootcamp because I had too much student debt and felt I could leverage my architectural background. So I went about this on my own and this is what I did. 

First, I consumed a healthy helping of online material. I found Linkedin Premium courses, Medium.com articles, and YouTube videos to be extremely helpful in exposing me to what I was getting myself into with user experience. Having a LinkedIn Premium account gave me access to LinkedIn Learning so I checked out Chris Nodder’s UX Design and UX Foundation courses. I also watched Agile Foundations by Doug Rose along with a few others. On Youtube I found content creators like Mike Locke, Sharon Onyinye, and Ugly Unicorns who were really helpful too. They each have a plethora of content on everything from how to ace an interview to how to look for projects for your portfolio. I also liked Medium for when I needed a reminder that I wasn’t crazy to pursue this on my own. Medium has great content in general, but reading people’s stories was motivating. 

Secondly, I created a portfolio full of mock projects. I took websites I frequented and reimagined them in different ways and I even created my own made up projects to conduct research on. I went as far as assigning myself criteria to adhere to, created surveys for feedback, designed personas, and the works. I used my portfolio to act out as best I could what a UI/UX designer would do. If you think you’ll struggle to come up with projects on your own there are also websites that generate projects and design challenges like Daily UI Challenge and UXchallenge. If you’d like to see the portfolio I used when applying to jobs you can view it here. Now as far as where and how to display your portfolio, there are a few options you can use. I used Adobe Portfolio since it came with my expensive Adobe subscription :). However, Dribbble, Behance, and Issuu are free platforms you can use as well. 

As a segway to this step I will caution you to learn the programs that are mostly used within the field. Those programs are Figma, Invision, and Sketch currently. All three of these are free to download and fairly friendly to learn. Another nod to my architecture background is the fact that we had to learn how to pick up computer programs pretty quickly to showcase our designs. So learning computer programs wasn’t too bad for me, but if you want a crash course on shortcut keys to get you started let me know :). I also learned Adobe XD just because it came with my Adobe Subscription. Becoming well versed in these programs is a necessary step to walk the walk and talk the talk of an UI/UX designer so I stress this step. I will also note that I was asked what computer software I was comfortable with on every interview. There’s no way around it haha.

Thirdly, leverage your existing network! I made do with what and who I had around me! The importance of maintaining your relationships with friends and colleagues CANNOT be overstated. As I mentioned before, I was considering a career change back in 2019. I spoke with countless friends during that time and each time I came away with new connections, new points of contact, and new suggestions. When you think about it, you probably already know someone who is working in close proximity to the field you want to be in. Reach out to them! It was a friend that referred me to my current employer and helped get me in front of the right people to secure the job. It was a friend that reviewed my portfolio with me to make sure it was solid. There were friends and colleagues that connected me to other people that they knew off the strength of our relationship. So again, talking to people is free. Take advantage.

Finally, I also encourage you to look into your previous experiences. I would look at job postings and their requirements and consider how I was already operating in that capacity with my job at the time. Ten times out of ten there was something that was transferable in my existing skill set. I was able to use that and I’m telling you that you can as well. While you might be transitioning into a new field, you are NOT starting at square zero here. You have experience so consider how it applies and tailor your resume to speak to where you’re going. And that folks is my spill.

I hope you all took something from this blog post. As always feel free to leave a comment, tip, or suggest topics for me in the comments. I’d love to hear from you all about your experiences and how we all can connect.

My Best,

Kiera

How I Realized It Was Time to Jump From Architecture

Hey everyone! I hope you all are doing well over there and your week is doing what it ought to. Today I’m coming to you all to chop it up about how and why I knew it was time for me to leave architecture for a bit. Before we get started, I wanted to write this blog post specifically for all those that are considering a career switch. (In short, just do it.) While I may have transitioned my career from architecture to user experience, I hope that you’ll hear something in today’s post that will resonate with you. I hope it makes you go…”Oh that’s me too” no matter what career you’re attempting to pivot into. So let’s get into it. 

To be honest, it took a while for me to process that I was actually at my breaking point with architecture. I had dreamed of being an architect ever since I was seven years old so to have the stronghold I attached my identity to be questioned was unnerving for me. I probably stayed a great deal longer in architecture based on fear alone. Any who, back to the story. Here’s a list of reasons that let me know it was time to move on from architecture:

1. I realized I never truly loved it. 

2. I kept adding other things to pacify my desire to leave the field.

3. I realized I was staying in architecture for everyone but myself.

4. Architecture could not afford me the lifestyle I ultimately wanted.

I’ll break down each of these quickly for you guys. So as I mentioned, I never truly loved it. Now I know when it comes to loving what you do people are split on this. There are those of us who think you don’t always get to love what you do, but you do what makes a solid income to eventually provide you with the life you want. It is then at that point that you can look for what you love. Then there are those of us who think and actually do love what they do for a living and are walking in their purpose despite the life it affords you. I see the benefits to both mindsets, but as for me I subscribe to the latter group. I want to love what I do and I believe money will always follow when you’re pursuing your passion relentlessly and pairing it with ingenuity.

Ultimately, architecture was never the love of my professional life. What I actually had was a major appreciation for it that bordered on the lines of a love hate relationship. I only “loved” architecture when the design worked at the end of the semester and it was more a sigh of relief. I’d think, “Wow, the design that I poured over and into for the last 3 months worked. Fantastic.” After that moment, I’d go back to questioning if the build up of that moment was worth working towards each and every semester. And ultimately, I could never resolve that issue for myself. Disclaimer: this is not to say architecture is totally done with me. With architecture you’re jumped into this life and you never quite jump out of it haha. I still have my moments.

Second, I kept adding things to keep me engaged. Given my love of graphic design, as long as a company offered me freedom to play around with more liberating pursuits I found that I could stick around. I had the best of both worlds this way. I had the rigidity in architecture, but the looseness of branded environments to keep me at bay. I would also stay involved in some work group or initiative at whatever firm I was apart of to keep myself engaged, but that was never enough to keep me fully vested. Architecture alone was never enough to keep me interested. I ended up job hopping towards the end to prove that to myself also. 

While my third reason is self explanatory, I found that I was staying in architecture for every other reason outside of my own desire. As I mentioned before, I just knew I would be an architect from a young age and everyone knew this because I told them so. I was sticking around to prove that I wasn’t wrong, to show that things worked out the way that they should, to be a face of reference for the next generation of Black and minority architects behind me, and to take on the torch from the greats that I admired and worked with within the field. None of those reasons were good enough though. I really wanted to be able to stay for myself and love it.

Lastly, architecture didn’t come with the salary I needed to afford me the lifestyle I wanted. I am one of the millennials that took out a pretty penny in student loans to make college a possibility. Due to that, when that loan repayment kicked in I quickly saw that the life I wanted to live could not be possible with the salary I had. In general though, I always felt that we did way too much within our profession to get paid the way we did. I also remember growing up there always being a misconception amongst my friends that I was some big time architect making a large amount of money. I never gave them that idea; however, since architecture always seemed like this mythical profession to us it allowed the imagination to jump as high as you wanted it to on the salary scale :). I would eventually go on to educate them on this but in any case, financially I desired and needed more. Disclaimer: This is my own personal experience, but I still serve encouragement for the pursuit of both professions. I just serve that encouragement with a side of reality check as well.

So with all of those reasons persistently gnawing at me, I finally made the jump and I am really happy I did. I am learning something new every day, I am getting the opportunity to reimagine design often, and my team is amazing. I also know this blog post was long, but I wanted to paint the picture for you all that this moment in my life was a long time coming. It took five years to get here and while I can’t say I’ve figured it all out, I do know that I am finally answering the question I’ve always had of “Is there more?”. The answer is “yes there is” and I hope that that is the answer you all come to find whenever you get the chance to blaze whatever trail you set for yourself. It is never too late to reimagine what you want for yourself and go after it.

My best,

Kiera