How I became a UI/UX Designer in 2022
you're not good enough your dreams are too big you need a degree you don't deserve any of this i don't even know why you're here hey i'm rachel i'm a senior product designer working in Malaysia and this is how i got started in uiux design in high school
i always thought i had my life planned down i
studied really hard to secure a scholarship but i failed to do so i even took a
part-time law degree while working to fund my college fees but i dropped out
eventually because it just wasn't my gem i self-studied a diploma in accounting
because i thought i needed a cert
to prove my worth so i
decided to not pursue a degree as i didn't know what i wanted to do since 2013
i worked in different roles a call center for hotels a sales promoter for body
lotion a direct sales agent a real estate agent an account executive in the ad
agency and a digital marketing manager these jobs have shaped my personality
they have built my soft skills they have trained my resilience and without them
i wouldn't be who i am today but these jobs
have one thing in common it's just something that i do not enjoy i hate waking
up to and i just feel like it's not me and then i wonder is this how my life is
going to turn out to be am i going to wake up to a job i hate for the rest of
my life so i began searching for what i'm passionate
about by paying attention to the things that i
enjoy the most and i realize no matter what job i'm in i get caught up in the
visual design process it was something i see myself doing every day so i
thought to myself that's it that's the one i don't know how i'm gonna get there
but i'm gonna try i've been told that my lack of qualification
will not get me anywhere and
someone even told me that you know you should be happy that you even have a job
at our company on 4th of march 2019 i quit my job as a digital marketing
manager and i told myself that i will prove these people wrong and that's how
my self-learning journey began [Music] so i gave myself
a three-month deadline to have a job because i
couldn't afford to have no income and that's how i get started i started
learning ux with the free resources available online and google is my best
friend i also learned
how to code on the site with
free codecan because i feel like learning coding will help me become a better
designer and that i also have a passion for coding my learning process was
messy i learned adobe xd
and started playing with the
tool i needed something to showcase in my portfolio and i took a google
interview question and turn it into a case study so i wrote a case study in the
form of a medium article and at the same time i started preparing my cv i read
up a lot of job descriptions online to make sure
that i am well prepared for the job i was well
aware that my lack of qualification will put me in a tough spot because
competition is really high and i'm very aware that i need to prove myself that
i am able to take on the designer role
even though i have no
experience and no degree so i did whatever i can with the free resources online
to brush up my skills i studied day and night of design and code during the
three month
period i stumbled upon a hackathon i offered
design help and front-end code help despite having zero idea of how am i gonna
do that to be honest i was really grateful because we got top 10 in the
hackathon team
i got offered an interview with the bank
shortly after i had a few job interviews but i failed all of it because they
wanted someone who could do both graphic design and ux design and one of the
recruiters told me that
i am too ambitious that's why they don't want
to hire me i applied to a few startups in Malaysia that i see myself working
with who has great culture and a mature design team and then something wonderful
happened faith called me up and offered me an interview knowing that my chances
are really slim i told my
boyfriend that how about i just give up on
this opportunity don't continue with it and just go with the offer that the
bank has given me but i'm glad i listened to him and i went for the interview
straight away so this is how my assignment looked like before the interview i
practiced my presentation in front of my computer
at least five times to make sure that i nailed
the interview to my surprise i got the job and here i am i'm sharing my story
with all of you because i wanted to remind you one thing you have everything
you need to start and you will never feel
