Why I left Food Technology to become a User Experience Designer
It’s definitely been a whirlwind journey.
Ever since I was young, I have always loved being a creative. I draw on walls a lot. I carry lots of colored pens and sharpies. I do a lot of graphics design work on the side (particularly cartoons). I painted and made murals. But more than that, I love the spirit and freedom of creative thinking and looking at how I can help change things around (more than just “pretty-fying” them) and make an impact.
More than just a creative, I joined a lot of social development and impact driven development organizations in my university days. Leading projects that had a sense of purpose — whether that’s designing educational programs for underprivileged kids, play therapy activities for orphaned children, or rethinking better ways to combat malnutrition.
However somehow, life choices and society’s norm of success pressured me into pursuing an initial career in food technology. At this point, I studied a bachelor of science degree in Management of Applied Chemistry. And pursued further to study business management for my master’s degree.
It was a weird choice, but I wanted to make my asian parents proud (as any nice obedient asian kid would do).
My chemistry and management experience landed me an awesome job in the flavours industry, where I stayed for two years doing lots of new product development launches. We innovated and launched the next food products with our fast moving consumer goods (FMCG) clients. I was in charge of handling the big guys- doing account management of the “Nestle’s and Unilever’s of the world” and facilitated their product development projects.
But after a while, my creative side started to lose itself. But more so, I felt so empty doing a 9 to 5 job without a sense of purpose. Continuing to pursue a career in the flavours industry became challenging for me to connect… how my work could solve real world problems ( i.e. environment, consumerism, education, human behavior changes..).
So, I became hungry to be in the forefront. I want the ground work of actually helping people in their everyday. I contemplated where I can find a role and use my innovative spirit, creative design skills and management background in every day issues and finding opportunities to solve them.
And that’s where … (thanks to google).. I randomly came across a career in User Experience (UX) and how this century old human design thinking is THE WAY to solve problems with pure human empathy.
And I just fell in love with it. I watched Dan Norman and his Norman door talks. I fell into the rabbit hole of watching TedTalks on design, looking at human behavior and figuring out how to break in into this industry. I read as much as I could on empathy and human design thinking.
So TADAAA! After much deliberation, I decided to invest in myself by taking in a solid 10 weeks of User Experience transform course at Academy Xi, Sydney. HELLO, TECH BOOTCAMP! Hi-five!
The next 10 weeks is going to be such a challenge but I cannot wait to get my hands dirty. We will be diving into the practices of UX, as well as building our portfolio with real live clients. On top of that, we will also be working on each of our personal projects and presenting actual products at the end of 10 weeks.
It’s going to be such a sprint! But all is well. I am hoping to shift industries and start pursuing UX as the next stage of my career.
So yes, hello. I am Denise. From a corporate cog to an empathy driven UX designer, pursuing to serve the world better one step at a time.
I plan to blog and release a 10 week series of my key learnings and journey along the way. Stay tuned for the rest of my UX adventure! Thanks for hopping along with me.
