ROXY: Thank you so much for chatting with me today! Claire, can you please share a bit about yourself.

Sure! I'm originally from China. Before doing the DMDL program at NYU I was an educator at Princeton University in Beijing. I loved teaching, but after a few years it came to a point where I just couldn't see myself teaching for the rest of my life, so I decided to explore potential new career paths.

It turned out that I stumbled into educational technology by accident. Shortly after leaving teaching, I found an internship at an EdTech startup in Beijing. The CEO of the company believed that I could provide feedback on the design of their product from a former educator's perspective, so he gave me the title of "UX Consultant". In retrospect, I was the only "UX person" at the company who advocated for the user's experience and worked side by side with the engineers telling them what teachers would and would not like to use. I realized from that experience that I really liked UX and wanted to pursue it further as a career. I also knew that in order to get my foot in the door I would need more systematic training in the field, which led me to the DMDL program at NYU.

After graduation, I spent a couple of months doing instructional design at General Assembly before working as a UI/UX Designer at Amplify Education. I've been a UX designer ever since and am currently Senior UX Designer at Curriculum Associates.

ROXY: I'm also contemplating differences between being a learning designer, product designer and UX designer. Can you share a bit about your journey of how you make that decision?

I joined DMDL without any knowledge of what UX or even design entailed. One class that was particularly helpful in terms of better understanding the field was User Experience Design, a foundational course. In that course, I was able to learn about user experience and design and to begin working to develop my portfolio.

Another thing that helped was the opportunity to work with Professor Ahn on really interesting projects. One project involved designing a data visualization dashboard for math teachers to monitor their student's performance, and the student's evaluation of their learning. As part of this project, I collaborated with data scientists to build out the dashboard. The experience was great because it served as the basis for the portfolio I was building. With a portfolio I was able to get more interviews, which eventually led to a job in the field of the UX design.

I would say it took a lot of different experiences and reflection to find the path that was best for me. In the end, I found UX design to be a really good fit. The skills UX design entails are beyond just designing and prototyping - it takes business acumen, research skills, product thinking, engineering thinking, etc. I just like that there is always something new to learn.

ROXY: For people who have already been a learning designer and then want to switch to product design, what steps should they try to prepare to make this switch?

For people who have already graduated and missed the chance to pursue an internship in UX, it's harder to switch but definitely still possible. Many people have probably already said this but I would stress it again, you should start to build a portfolio. And I encourage students to learn more about what a product designer's portfolio should look like in order to prepare accordingly. I know it's a challenge to get the first project without an established a portfolio akin to the chicken and egg problem, but there are still ways. Some of my friends found their first project in NGOs or startups by volunteering to work on the digital platforms or apps without taking any compensation. That's one way. The other way is to participate in hackathons or design competitions. These are also great projects to demonstrate your ability to collaborate with people. Lastly, you can take the initiative to research and redesign an existing experience such as the Amazon Audible app, or the New York Times website. As a beginner your portfolio doesn't need to be like a pro but it needs to tell a complete story from the beginning to the end - i.e. the background of a project, what problem you were trying to solve, what process you went through, and then how you landed on your decisions.

When you have a portfolio with 3 or 4 projects in it, try to apply for Product/UX design jobs at EdTech companies first given your prior experience as a learning designer. Once you're in the door with your first UX position and have a feel for the role, you can explore other industries as well such as FinTech depending on your interests.

The last thing I'd like to mention is networking and putting yourself in the community. Go to the meetups to talk to entrepreneurs, designers, and engineers. Learn what's going on, what are people talking about. Who knows if anything would lead to an opportunity!

ROXY: Can you share a bit about what you do as a senior product designer at your current company?

As a UX designer on Curriculum Associates Platform team, I mostly work on teacher/school leader-facing products (as opposed to student-facing products). I design digital experiences that support the teacher's lesson planning and classroom teaching. Another important part of my work is designing and making enhancement to data analytics tools that empower school leaders with actionable insights into student performance.

Everyday is a bit different. Depending what project stage we're at, I get involved in different types of meetings and ways of collaboration. In general, I work closely with Product Managers and other stakeholders in product discovery, user research, and product ideation, and then we'd gradually bring visual designers and engineers along the journey to make sure the polished final design will be implemented properly. I also work with user researchers to run usability testing as needed.

In addition to the project-level work, I attend design team meetings and design critique sessions. As a senior level designer, I'm also mentoring an intern.

What does it take to become a product designer?

I've mentioned some of this in previous answers, and can add some other points here. Product Design is a process to create products that solve problems and provide meaningful experiences to users. So in my opinion the first key skill for a product designer is the problem solving ability, which can be further broken down into the ability to empathize with the user, to gather the information and distill the findings, to identify the problems or opportunities, to understand the business and constraints, to find the resources to carry out tasks, and to validate and evaluate the ideas, etc. As you can see, I didn't mention drawing and prototyping. Not because they're irrelevant skills, but because they should be media or tools carefully selected and used to accomplish the former tasks. In other words, the process is more important than the artifacts, the outcome is more important than the output.

Once you build a solid problem solving framework, you have mastered a transferable skill that can be applied to problems in different domains. That's the designer's magic. Beyond that, a product designer should have a learning mindset and be ready to learn every single day.

Of course, there are some hard and soft skills that I encourage a person to equip themselves with in order to become a product designer. Hard skills: Design and prototyping tools (especially advanced prototyping tools), front-end language (designers usually don't need to code, but knowing a little programming allows you to better understand the affordance and constraints to propose design, and to better collaborate with engineers). Soft Skills are important as well as you need to communicate with others and present your ideas regularly.

Looking back on the time that you were at a DMDL program, what is the one thing that you wish you should have known or you should have done in terms of knowledge and skills that you wish you could have obtained back then?

I wish I had spent more time on learning research methods and programming skills. Although I did take game research and creative coding class in the DMDL program, I wish I had a chance to learn more. These two skills train your ability to think systematically, and it's not always easy to learn on your own or at work. Research is a very fundamental framework that's used to approach problems and in my opinion everybody should get some education on research methods. In terms of design, I believe you ability to conduct research essential.

ROXY: I'm an international student. I wonder, as an international student yourself, did you have any challenges back then, when you just graduated? And do you mind sharing the challenge? And how did you overcome it?

I love this question. I definitely have experienced challenges as an international student/employee. In retrospect, the biggest challenge is the language and the culture barrier.

Although I had spent years learning English and I had made a lot of international friends even before coming to the US, when it comes to conveying the ideas with subtle meaning or debating on complicated topics, I often feel the limitation. I remember the first course I took at NYU was Cognitive Science. The learning content itself was already very hard, and the professor asked us to work in groups to discuss the differences between "hypothesis", "theory", and "assumption", and then present the results to the whole class. I was almost traumatized by that first class :) Also, growing up I didn't eat the same food or listen to the same music as my American peers, it was at times hard for me to relate to when my coworkers make a cultural reference or tell a joke. I got better with time though!

In regards to overcoming cultural and language barriers, I would like to say that it is what it is. If you are an international student, you shouldn't be too hard on yourself. It's already a great achievement that you are here doing the study or work in your second language. What's more, you can bring a different perspective which is a unique advantage you should leverage. From my experience, most tech employers in the US are quite open minded and they evaluate candidates in a comprehensive way with a focus on work abilities, so don't worry too much. But of course, working on your communication skills is a lifelong effort no matter where you go. Right?

Yeah, thank you, Claire, for all your words of wisdom which really opened my eyes.