Hey all! How was everyone’s first week of January? Did you start some New Years resolutions you want to focus on? How about going out for a celebratory brunch? Crazy how time goes by so fast…
ICYMI, I published my first initial post on Substack earlier this week, to a lot of positive reception! Thank you to those who have supported my return to writing.
Post 2 will be a warm-up to my work and life diaries, since I will be starting my new position on Monday. What do I have planned?
My design areas of focus for work
With starting a new job, comes with new, unfamiliar, and even scary tasks & expectations that you, as a designer, are now responsible for. Yet, this is what I love about starting anew - you get this fresh, clean slate to “designing” your career. (I’ve been meaning to use that pun for a while now.) Versus when let’s say, when creating goals in a stagnant environment, you don’t feel as inspired or motivated anymore.
At Corus Entertainment, I’ll be working for the Global News team - which entails a different line of work, under a different kind of industry. I will no longer be working on B2B or enterprise experiences (for the time being). With a new product, presents new challenges, and I thought of some areas of focus that I’ll be facing in my upcoming position, followed by some resources I already sought out, or anticipate to seek out.
Accessibility (or A11y). Count how many times as a designer, you’ve heard of the word “accessibility”. You probably have lost count. Now, count how many times as a designer, you’ve intently worked on accessibility related projects. Was it only a handful? Or, perhaps you’ve never incorporated accessibility in your projects at all. Accessibility will be of high importance in my role - under the province of Ontario, all companies based must follow the Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act (AODA), regarding persons with disabilities. This is a really great opportunity to finally learn about an issue that affects us in everyday life, as more than 6 million Canadians aged 15 or over (22% of the population) identify as having a disability - and its expected actual numbers are likely higher.
If you’re a fellow Torontonian or Ontarian that wants to learn more about accessibility, I highly recommend starting out and taking the AODA Online Training. It’s free, and you get a neat certificate at the end of the course. Next up would be Apple’s approach to Accessibility under their Human Interface Guidelines, Google’s guidelines on Accessibility in regards to Material Design, and lastly, Mozilla’s documentation on Accessibility.
Product management and thinking. As my official job title from thereon is “Product Designer”, I often hear from designers that the difference between Product and UX Designers are that, UX deals with literally, “user experience” and Product with “product thinking” - even business strategy as well. I agree with this statement - from Youtuber femke.design, she mentions in one of her videos that when she used to work at Uber, a larger, more established company, they had to ensure their product stays #1 on the market and remain competitive to competitors.
One day, while looking up resources online on product thinking, I went to Meetup.com - out of all the places you would be looking up design or business-related resources. I found this really great community called Product School Toronto that hosts webinars basically every single day on becoming a better product manager! Not gonna lie, as it took me my entire life to work as a full-time designer, I absolutely have no intention in switching careers anymore throughout my lifetime. But since Product Design cares a lot on overseeing the full life-cycle of a product, I’ve been watching Product School’s videos on my downtime - the reasons being, how to learn how to think like a PM, and how to learn how to work with PMs.
UX research. I pushed pixels on Figma all day, every day at my previous job. I think that’s common in junior/entry-level positions, that you’ll be doing a good chunk of production work. As a result, I never really got any chances to do any formal, UX research to help support or strengthen the work I was doing. Now that UX research will be a key primary responsibility I have to fill, I was told that I get full reign as to how I want to:
Speak to our users/customers.
Meet OKRs in our roadmap.
Validate a hypothesis or assumption.
And my favourite - choose which UX research tools or software to use!
I’m gonna say it, but my knowledge of UX research so far is very limited and vague. But, we will get there.
Ad optimization. The most common projects I hear that my friends and peers work on, include B2B, B2C, consumer-facing, and enterprise products. As I’m going to be working on a consumer-facing product that drives revenue with ads, tips and advice on designing for ad optimization for web & mobile experiences would be great!
Moving on to my life resolutions for creating a better 2022…
Expressing gratitude and the good things. I’ll be straight up, I identify things that I know for sure I can’t do due to how much commitment or effort it could potentially take. As someone though that strives on open-mindedness, I do seek alternatives if I want to make something work.
So far, creating my Substack and writing on Medium soon has put me on the right path, for talking about things that are on my mind and how to pursue my goals. As more and more people are trying to be mindful and reflect on the goodness in their lives, I’ve been doing the same with Daylio - an app I’ve been using on-and-off for the past 3 years, but will use more often as it’s the only journaling tool that has worked for me.
Creating my ideal WFH setup. To be honest, this will come with time. Because of money. I’m gonna start slow and get the essentials, such as this standing desk from Fully and an ergonomic chair. I have this unhealthy habit of looking up aesthetic desk setups on Pinterest and Youtube for hours on end… again, we will get there.
Expanding my repository of instant pot recipes. As well, reducing meat & dairy consumption because of nose allergies. Winters in Toronto are cold. If I’m going to be staying home for half of the year, I better make good use of my instant pot. Which, I have been - I’ve just been making the same recipe over and over. I need more recipes to replicate. Specifically, good recipes that don’t have meat or dairy. Thanks to my allergies to dust and pollen, I’m now limiting my dairy consumption. (Which lowkey implies I’m lactose intolerant…) And recently, due to the floods in BC, I’m also reducing my meat consumption.
Finances. Other than my WFH setup, I’m not really saving up for anything major right now. As a once frivolous person in my early undergrad days, I now want to be mindful of my personal spending habits. If there’s one good thing about the pandemic, it’s that I don’t spend a lot on dining in and entertainment as much as I used to. I also actively seek alternatives to mass consumerism (wow I sound like my former Communications self right now), such as purchasing on Facebook Marketplace before buying at big retailers as a last resort, and making a grocery list and sticking to it affirmably. The latter I’m already very good at, since I am a petite person anyway and don’t need that many groceries.
As both a work and life-related resolution, I have been mentoring at a bunch of student and university hackathons this month! Catch me at Western’s SheHacks+ 6 and Sheridan’s Hackville 2022. The reason why I am doing this to give back to the online design community. As a self-taught designer, I give back to those who were once in my shoes, and I want to give aspiring designers the resources I didn’t get when I was transitioning into design. I also want to improve on my public speaking skills and level up my personal growth & development.
And lastly, I mentioned Medium in my last post. I am in the works of writing my full-fledged Medium article on job hunting for a new UX position in Toronto. I am actually very excited to share with everyone, my background and prior experience, what I wanted in my new job, and my tips for landing your next role in 2022!
Cheers,