A reflection on my first year as a junior UX/UI Designer
I bet that most Junior Designers like me, who just came out of the college/university, are super excited about their first offer. However, as you adapt to new company culture and work routine, some of you might start doubting your abilities, work environment, work ethic or even career choice! So, what has gone wrong for some graduates?
This article might reset your understanding of your career path if you are a fresh graduate or a to-be. If you are a working Junior Designer, I hope you can also reflect on the lessons I have learned or things I have realized during my first formal job.
Races and Gender Distribution
Why are gender equality and diversity important in enterprises these days in most developed countries? It is because it does make a difference in employees’ daily work!
When I first joined my first ever formal job, I realized one thing: if you are a minority in your gender or race in a company and you didn’t get enough support from your company, you could slowly get frustrated and panicked. This may not be the case for everyone if you are white or male and if your company is highly diversified in gender and race or has a caring HR department that organizes team building and mental health workshops regularly.
Sometimes, these feelings can be very minor, and it is only in your subconscious mind. Personally, I do feel that if you don’t find many people of your race or your gender, particularly gender, you start to feel isolated or underrepresented in your organization unconsciously.
This type of issue is called External Factor. It is not really our responsibility or ability to change the situation. And this problem usually occurs in small companies and start-ups. As Junior Designers, what we can do is learn about the degree of diversity of your employer and its size before we apply for a job. This approach can help us prevent unnecessarily unhappy work experiences.
To be clear, although my last job had the same issue, the HR did me fairly, and my team was supportive, so it greatly decreased the influence on my work performance.
Company Culture
This is such a cliche thing to talk about for job topics. But many fresh graduates or people who urgently need a job for whatever reasons tend to ignore this. The consequence of the wrong company culture for you is mostly slowly suffering from mental health issues — a slow burn.
Looking back on my experience, here are a few tips to know a company’s culture:
Look at their website about company culture, but don’t believe everything they say; find the latest events and photos from their digital presence.
Be aware of anything the interviewer talks about their companies. They may expose their company culture without noticing.
You should ask them cultural questions in your interview.
Observe people’s personalities in the organization. For example, if most of them seem conservative, not-talkative and private while you are an extroverted, talkative, outgoing type, this is not a good fit.
That being said, company culture is a personal thing. There is no perfect company culture or group culture, but beware if that’s the right culture for your personality.
Some people may ask, I know the culture is not for me, but what if they pay me a lot or if I really need a job offer at the moment? Should I just accept it? If you need money or a job offer urgently, you can consider accepting the offer for now; however, as I mentioned above, you should be prepared to endure unpleasant work culture daily and consider switching to a better workplace at the same time. It looks easy, but it is hard! Working from 9 to 5 in a suffocating environment already drains all your energy, and you need to find new jobs and hone new skills after work. That is a whole disaster.
Besides, you should watch out for these red flags:
No team activities. After-work team activities may not be for everyone, especially for introverts or people with family. But it is necessary to know your colleagues, learn from each other and build a sense of community. If your company has no updates on team activities, never schedule one, it is not good for you!
No mental health support. Of course, we can’t ask every HR to be super caring to every employee. But beware of how they treat their people from the orientation to your daily work. The orientation could tell a lot!
Not responsive HR. Yes. If your HR contact is not responsive to your questions and concerns, better consider switching your company.
Ironically, I always joke that I hate team building in Korean and Japanese culture that they drink and eat with their colleagues and seniors, but when I am really without any activities, I suddenly feel they are sort of advantageous.
In conclusion, learn about the company culture and watch out for the red flags all the time, and see if you like the management style and what they are doing at the company when you are working.
Remote or In-Office
These are also personal preferences. Your working style is affected by many factors, such as distance, personality, mental and physical conditions, etc. There is no right or wrong.
I suggest that, if you have camera phobia or you just generally don’t feel motivated remotely working, and if traffic allows, you better choose to work in the office. However, if you are highly disciplined, uncommunicative and enjoying alone time, you can choose remote. I can adapt to both as an ambivert, but sometimes I struggle in both. So it depends.
Here are some factors which can determine if WFH is for you:
Your winter is long and snowy. If you are like me, living at a place above 40 degrees north latitude with a snowy, dark, long winter, better apply for WFH all winter. The traffic is no fun in winter.
You live far from your office. I believe time is more important than money, as I read the book Time Smart. Don’t spend 2 hours on a round commute; you can save them for more meaningful things.
You function well by yourself. Good for you if you enjoy being by yourself and are super concentrated at work this way!
If you think you fit all three factors, chances are you will enjoy WFH. However, there are potential risks and measures to take if you WFH for a long time. I will introduce some lessons that I have learned about WFH:
Stay connected with people. Humans are social animals based on our evolution. After WFH for a long time, I realized that sometimes just calling your friends and parents or having nice weekend gatherings do help to bring back connections and that if your work team chats online every day, it would also help. Otherwise, you may feel like an isolated island.
Take a break in the afternoon if needed. After lunches, I always feel a bit dizzy in the afternoon. I found that going outside to walk a bit after a meal alleviates that sleepiness. And some people suggest eating a light meal such as salads and meats or any low-carb diet for lunch, but this was hard for me. Or take a 20-min snap if you really feel tired, within which you don’t need to fall asleep. Don’t try to fight that sleepiness with stimulations; I found this was the worst strategy! You may find yourself distracted by that stimulation a lot!
Wake up early! Most people start their work at 9 a.m. If you want to have an efficient work day, always wake up at 7:30 or earlier. You need to have at least 30 minutes as a cushion time to let your food digest.
Move your body! Everybody should have common sense that a sedentary lifestyle is bad! I found that going to a workout from time to time helps your stress at work and your body! Better move around after a while at work regularly! Your body, your eyes, fingers, shoulders……all!
Wear your blue-light filtering glasses! As a designer, I spend a long time staring at the screen, and those glasses are my daily gadget. Also, try to move your eyes to faraway objects after about 20 minutes of screen time.
Stay focused at work during work. I personally found this one the hardest. Why? You may have appointments or other things to get into your work schedule. And it could be hard for some people to stay focused at work when no one is monitoring them, or their homes have many distractions, such as family members talking or moving around. Try to find your way to stay focused; For example, let yourself work in a relatively quiet environment, set up a downtime for some apps for your iPhone, or MacBook set up Do Not Disturb mode, etc. The choices are very individual.
Avoid overtime. Yes, avoid overtime as much as you can! Many people are having trouble leaving their job after 5 pm. Why? Because they are at home with their pcs anyway. Try your best to finish today’s tasks before that 5 pm comes! Because once you start a cycle of working after 5 pm, it is slowly eating your personal time, and you always fall into this pattern. Then one day, you may ask yourself, “Why do I always have no personal time?”. However, if your boss is asking you to finish too much within one day, try to be honest with a fair explanation to your boss, asking for a better deadline. It is always our own responsibility to take care of ourselves and protect our rights in this world.
Don’t trap yourself in your job! Yes, you should never consider this as something permanent, even though it says “permanent” on your offer. Nope. Things could change. You can get laid off anytime. And gradually you may consider changing your job in case. Do not stop learning new things, things that interest you. And you should have a LIFE! What I mean is to have your sports, friends and hobbies, not just a JOB. Don’t ever stop your hobbies for your work life.
Study VS Work
One very harsh reality is that the way you design projects at school differs greatly from the business world.
You may learn the whole procedure in UX courses, from a creative brief, brainstorming, wireframing and user testing until prototyping. There is nothing wrong with that. However, I found that some businesses eliminate design procedures A LOT. I do not mean this is right or wrong, as those businesses do it for many reasons, such as financial limitations. But, it does confuse many new designers.
What frustrates many junior designers is that there is little creative space for fonts, colours, images and user testing. Your work may be simply tweaking an established system and showing your work to the stakeholders from time to time, which is no fun.
Here are some possible solutions if you are in this dilemma:
Choose a good company to work for at the start! Look at the projects they did or have been doing and see what resources they provide to their designers. Their work culture is part of it. Ask yourself if they have a mature UX team.
Tried to join a design studio or agency. The benefit of joining a design company is getting all design resources, various projects and classic UX/UI methodologies.
The problem with this kind of working style is that, as designers, we gradually forget what we have learned about design procedures. The sacrifice that we made is that we have to pick them up in our personal time because you cannot predict if your next position will ask for more design processes to be done. That leads to the next topic: self-development.
Self-development
What always amazes me is how many people share their knowledge online for viewers to develop themselves. I think these writers are truly lovely. I used to be very reluctant to share my thoughts online because I am private and constantly think about the pros and cons of doing so.
However, I recently realized one thing: sharing your knowledge now or never. Why? Because my current understanding of the topic I am talking about is the clearest. I can’t ask myself to write this blog when I reach the summit of my career life or just a better position after five months. By then, I shall lose most of my fresh memories and thoughts about the situation.
What inspires me daily in Canada is how many people older than me are eager to learn. If a senior could learn this as a youngster, you should be able to!
But you might say, what should I learn? What’s the point of continuous learning if I am doing fine in my current position? Well, here are a few lessons I have learned:
Your motivation for self-development should come from yourself. My friend enrolled in a coding program popular in job markets but couldn’t finish it as she realized how much she hated coding.
Never stop learning and shifting your views. The world is changing daily, and human history is a story of change. You should change yourself at moments, too.
If you are like me, sometimes finding it hard to stick to the learning plan or lack motivation, you may exaggerate the difficulty of finishing something or forget what’s in it for you. Let’s say you bought seven books about graphic design, but you can’t stick to your plan of reading them every day, or that pile of books just scares you. You can try to think about the benefits you can get when you finish them and really imagine yourself doing the whole process. Trust me. You will realize it is not that hard in your visualization, and you will be motivated once you see the positive outcome for yourself.
Mental and Physical Health
I cannot emphasize how important health is to a person at work. Here are some tips for you to stay healthy at work, especially remotely.
Go out for 30 to 60 minutes for sunlight. You have been at home from 9 to 5, and the sun is already down. After some time, your circadian rhythm will be in trouble and affect your sleep, digestion and mood.
Drink lots of water. Sitting before your computer is hurting your eyes and butts. Do get up for water.
Eat slowly and nutritious foods. If you have a meeting at lunchtime, you better eat after instead of missing a meal. And you shouldn’t work while eating. Always look for healthy and suitable diets.
Go for exercise as much as you can. Exercise helps improve your mood and sharpen your mind!
Note down negative thoughts and share them with people you trust. Commonly, we have negative experiences at work, distress in life and other mental health issues. Don’t hold on to them yourself or ignore them. You can try to analyze your thoughts or share them to find solutions. The longer you hold these negative thoughts, the more painful you will feel.
Ask for professional help. If your mental or physical condition is severe, don’t hesitate to ask for sick leaves and go to health care services. Always place yourself above your work!
Reconsider your path
Real businesses are often different from the academy. Only when you go to work, do you realize how you fit this career. If you find it is not for you, move on, explore other opportunities, and learn new skills rather than spend hours debating with yourself. Sometimes, you need to trust your intuition.
Thank you for reading my first-ever blog online. I like to write with a cup of Starbucks Matcha Tea Latte. If you find this article informative and helpful, you can show me some love and support by buying my next latte at the end of my blog webpage.
And if you would like to read more thoughts and life lessons from me, please consider subscribing to my Medium, subscribe to my blog on xinyiwangdesign.com, or connecting on LinkedIn.
By the way, wish you a Merry Christmas and a happy 2023 (Plus a Christmas song for you to enjoy)!
Comments