Wonder how I ended up in design?
My path to UX designing was somewhat unique but I truly believe I was destined to be here right now. As they say, beautiful paths cannot be discovered without getting lost.
As a kid playing sports, being creative and thinking different from the usual were my thing. Doing scenic paintings, pencil sketches and the lesser known art of chalk carving were my go to breaks.
Being a national level badminton player I always loved to compete and take up new challenges. The never give up attitude and the urge to improve in an all-round manner came along. Little did I know it was all preparing and structuring me for the future.
Coming from the startup capital of India I was always into science and technology. Engineering was always my interest since I was good at mathematics and curious to learn the science behind how things worked. During my final semester I was lucky enough to get an opportunity to collaborate with the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) for my project. As soon as I entered one of their ground stations, I was totally astonished to see a large number of screens having a huge amount of data with scientists interacting and controlling them. I definitely had a thought about how complex it should have been to create such tools which could operate a rocket/satellite miles apart. But never thought I’d be creating such beautiful interfaces in the future.
Going with the flow, after my undergraduate degree I worked as a Software Engineer in one of the World’s top IT companies which introduced me to the current trends in technology and gave me a complete understanding of the software sector.
Not being much into coding I somewhere felt I had to find something really interesting, learn it thoroughly and turn that into my career. I just wanted to find something that I love to do, so that I need not actually ‘work’ for another day in my life. After 3 months of experimenting and learning new stuff, getting to know about different types of work from several people, I finally found something that intrigued me the most and kept me yearning to learn more and more as days passed. This was one such field which was the union of all the things I ever liked and was good at. The perfect blend of creativity and technology which would shape my career in the near future and myself as a person overall.
Once I figured out what exactly I wanted to do, I never looked back again. Started researching the best possible way to learn UX designing online so that I could make a transition in a few months. Found a perfect mentor who guided me so gracefully into this beautiful field. Soon I was hooked with the Interaction Design Foundation (IDF) certification courses and within 3-4 months I was able to crack my first ever interview for the role. During my certification I feel I just did not learn but imbibed the knowledge and turned into a problem solver, not just at work but off work as well.
UX designing is one such domain which has immense potential in changing and reforming the way the world makes progress. With increasing use of technology and processes being transformed online due to the pandemic, the needs of the user have become the top priority and it's our responsibility as designers to drive it in the right direction.
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