Having been on the Verge of User Experience Design Profession
Choose the profession that speaks to your heart. And be prepared to change it again.
I the last summer day of 1992, on August 31, I was looking out the window, feeling nervous about the first school day. I saw a blinking light in the clear skies. It was moving slowly, from blue to red and back. I imagined it being a spaceship, landing in the nearby wheat field. Coming from a generation where Star Wars and Star Trek series were around for a while, these imaginations weren't unusual for a kid like me. Sometimes in the deep countryside we were living I lacked external stimuli to keep me engaged, and I had to deal with boredom on my own. I tended to mimic the screens and cockpit setups from the sci-fi series by drawing them on paper and placing them around my self-made design with chairs and a blanket. I simulated how it crashed into deep space and went anywhere I wanted.
Dangerous Dave and Cliparts
I was lucky and privileged to have discovered the computer (the excellent simulation machine!) in my first school year at age 6. Computers started to become more widespread in the early 90s when my country had just regained independence. My mom was an accountant, and I admired the computers they worked on in their office (oh, the Windows 3.1x). I enjoyed the smell of dot matrix printers and the warm air emitted from the computers in her office. Some of her colleagues were kind to let me play computer games (Dangerous Dave, anyone?). I was hooked on the hidden world waiting to be uncovered on a 15'' screen. At age 12, we got our PC at home. I once remember discovering my mom's printouts with Microsoft Office clipart, and I wanted to learn this magic of gaining access to those visuals, so she taught me.
I continued tinkering and, early in high school, started the free programming class (Pascal, Borland's Delphi) together with other two of my classmates. I was the least math-savvy mind here, but I loved the endless creativity that programming provided through making games or things that provided a functional utility like calculators. I was particularly passionate about interactive visuals, so I started learning Photoshop and Macromedia Flash and making movies; we even participated in the national finals with our visual vs. verbal information efficiency research. My friends asked to create posters and other visuals for their events. I learned web development (PHP, MySQL) and was asked to develop websites (and, in some cases, even got paid!). I loved how connected I could be to other people by creating something valuable to them.
This was it. As a naturally shy and insecure teenager, I felt I could positively impact the world. It wasn't unusual for me to meet the dawn after programming for the whole night. I wasn't particularly keen on parties (or social gatherings, as a matter of fact). My sister called me the geek, and she was right. It hurt, but at least the thing I loved gave me a sense of some self-worth.
Technology for people
In 2003, when I was still in high school, I started contemplating a design career. I didn’t have formal training in the arts except for a habit of doodling unsophisticated moments from imaginary battle scenes or doing abstract imageries to keep my senses when I felt bored at school (which happened a lot). But I wanted to build things that are useful to people.
I wanted to pursue my passion deeper, so after finishing high school, I followed computer science. I could not find anything where both my fondness for design and programming would meet as the available design programs were focused on arts and had background requirements I couldn't meet. So I chose a systems analysis major in computer science. I loved how it brought people aspects of software through requirements engineering and flow charts for planning the systems. It equipped me with tools for thinking about the benefit of systems to its users and stakeholders. I discovered Information Architecture thanks to thought leaders like Louis Rosenfeld & Peter Morville (polar bear book!), Christina Wodtke (Boxes and Arrows) and Jesse James Garrett (The Elements of UX) and I became a member of the Information Architecture Institute.
After having tried computer administrator's (I was terrible at it!), sales (forever grateful for kicking me out of my comfort zone!), search engine quality assurance specialist's (my first ever remote work!), and front-end developer's role, in 2009, just in the middle of the global financial recession, I went to Denmark to pursue a degree in Product Design. It was focused on designing tangible products, and out of my comfort zone, but something I wanted to experience. The approach was based on the Scandinavian tradition of involving stakeholders in the design process called participatory design. That, to me, was a way to solve the problem with product development culture — detachment from the people whose lives technology promised to improve.
User experience as a career against the reason
My then-girlfriend, now wife, wanted to return, so we left Denmark after my studies in 2011. By then, it was clear I wanted to pursue a career in user experience design. The problem was that there were some user experience positions in the Western world but none in Latvia. I explored other job options, including digital marketing, where I already had sales experience in 2007, and saw the field's emergence while working at the local WSI Digital Marketing franchise. I also considered returning to the development path, which seemed to be a more pragmatic choice. There were plenty of open job roles; they were paid better. I even reached out to my ex-boss, who confirmed my observations that developers are much more in demand than designers, and it wouldn't be likely this change shortly. However, he also encouraged me to pursue my gut feeling because contemporary design has become more functional and focused on usability than aesthetics.
It gave me hope, so I continued looking. Luckily I had a few freelancing web development and design gigs. It wasn't much, but it helped me to pay off monthly bills. Nevertheless, I started to feel concerned about my financial situation. Some doubts even crossed my mind about wasting a few years of my life in pursuit of design instead of growing my skillset in a much more accessible (and paid) development field. Since I didn't have any background in arts, I explored the possibility that my pursuit of a design career was doomed to fail.
One day my heart started to beat faster when the moment I was looking for came as I noticed the published job position with the magical letters “UX” in it. The description seemed what I was looking for, and I immediately applied. It was indeed the first position of that kind that came to my attention in Riga. After several application rounds, I was happy to get a job, and these were among my best 5+ years of learning experience designing digital products. I was lucky. But I was glad to be prepared when I met the opportunity.
As the years went by, I became an active member of the local user experience community, shared my knowledge, facilitated workshops, spoke at the events, and tried to give back to the community as much as possible since I've benefited from the community so much myself.
It has been a privilege to be part of an emerging field, and I've enjoyed the dynamics. Now in 2022, user experience positions are not rare. There is a new breed of professionals coming into the area. The user experience field becomes more effective, professionalized, and diverse as we make tiny steps to ensure that teams start representing the customer base that they are building products and services. The field is more mature, combining the idealism of transparency and collaboration with pragmatic decision-making for efficiency and employing a more ethical approach by considering the large-scale societal impact.
The emergence of new design professions as a norm
While I've had the privilege to be part of the new emerging professions of digital marketers and user experience designers, it's plausible that the speed of new emerging fields has become a norm. As the information flow rates up, developing technology becomes complete considering not only functional but also ethical, forward-looking aspects of its impact on society; we are already observing new sets of roles like appearing technology ethicists, artificial intelligence designers, computational architects, conversation designers, speculative designers inviting to imagining possible futures and more nuanced design skillsets. The skillsets and requirements will probably become even more nuanced, and the speed of new required skills will increase alongside the global needs. There will be people enjoying the craft and others who enjoy leading and mentoring the creatives to maximize their impact and potential.
As the user experience design field matures, patterns emerge, and parts of the job are automated, it's natural to ask what the future of the designer could be like.
I can't predict the future, but one thing seems plausible, we will always need people willing and skilled to fight against entropy. Buildings erode, relationships fall apart, the economy becomes less inclusive, and technology brings more harm than benefit unless we put effort into designing them regardless of what name it's done.
My heart is with you in pursuing your passion.
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