Kateryna is one of the latest students to join the UX Academy Alumni. Currently she’s working as a Senior Graphic Designer at a well established Technology company. Our course coordinator managed to catch her just after she completed our Product Design course – They discussed her background, motivations behind studying the course, challenges, inspirations, and her next steps.
Q: Tell me a bit about yourself and how you got into Product design?
I am already experienced graphic designer aiming to serve all advertising materials for companies of different size . I’ve made plenty background projects for creative agencies and with marketing teams directly around the world. I was involved in the first web project in 2006 and at that time I did not have such available educational materials like nowadays. So without progressive knowledge, it was straight away lots of practice and experiment. There was much creative work and conceptual thinking but less analysis and testing usually it was done by manager and stakeholder of the project. So I felt like not fully involved in a product that exactly was developed. The new position as Product Designer that appeared not too recently describes the career in which I want to transform like a professional. I made research and found an intensive course in UX Academy in London, that totally covered my purpose.
Q: What made you decide to sign-up for the course?
First of all I took a time for webinar with tutors where I got clear intro to course and after I have decided to go deeply into the adventure of learning Product design. My last magic impulse to sign up for this course was a description of the small size of the group that is approximately 10 people. That meant I can have almost private classes with a small group of professionals-mates from different fields of digital projects.
Q: Which part of the course did you find the most interesting?
I have found the new fascinating practice of building a persona for application the future product that we developed with my team. I have never made it before as I always got the description of the target audience from the marketing department. The sociology, psychology and demography aspects needed to be taken into the account when you create your buyer persona. And of course, thanks to that we worked with the real product this process took more interest instead of if it was some imaginative one.
Q: Which part of the course did you find the most challenging?
The biggest challenge was learning the huge numbers of distinctive metrics. Due to my creative personality, I had to re-direct myself to complete another part of the project as analysis, investigation and testing. I met so many different types of metrics and tools to measure my solution to meet the client’s needs.
Q: Which part of Product design are you the most interested in?
The high-quality prototyping is the number one in my list of favourites. But after course I also discovered a new challenging part like the evaluation of your design with experts-colleagues, because before you share your prototype you have to present all searching materials that you did before prototyping and describe the business needs of stakeholders.
Q: How do you feel about Product design after the course?
I think on the course I got lots of information and sources that still have to be learnt due to intensive timeline it is just impossible to cover and study all of them, as more time is needed. But any way I feel the confidence in Product design already and wish to gain more practice.
Q: What advice would you give for people just getting into Product design?
Almost half of my career I was self-taught and it took me much time to combine all learned materials to make the structure that works better. So my advice is if you don’t have time to quickly jump into the new role, because you are not enough familiar with some part of responsibilities, you must take a course like I completed in UX Academy. And you will get a strategy 🙂 Nowadays it is convenient and it costs your investments.
Q: Who or what inspires you the most within the industry?
The product manager Marty Cagan is an incredible mentor for lots in industry. He shares his expertise across the professionals and I think he is one of the pioneers in tech products creating.
Q: What are your next steps?
My closest steps are practice and continuing developing in product design direction I am totally ready to be a part of the team who will provide the next-gen product that users love.
Tempted to make the jump into Product Design yourself? You can sign-up or just gain some more information about the Product Design course.