How getting my work stolen changed how I approach portfolios and my design career — This happened so long ago that I almost forgot I needed to write about this until a few industry friends were discussing it the other day. I can already hear many people calling me petty and immature because of how I choose to act today to prevent the same incidents…

Stop dreaming about working at an ideal company, be employed and start building your own ideal environment instead. — I got off a webinar-lecture about design processes, done by a designer at a large, considerably design-mature company. It wasn’t particularly interesting for me because it was junior-focused, so a lot of the content I consider too elementary and a little bit misleading because of its over-simplification of the topic.

An unreliable guide for you to survive what you’ve gotten yourself into — Designing for start-ups is not easy. Most of the time, you’re going to be the sole designer — the one-man-show of design authority in a pizza-hungry team of techies dying to ship half-broken features. “Ew, start-ups are so disorganised, and you have to do EVERYTHING.” Most junior designers, sometimes even…

User experience has a bad rep — So we rebranded to Product Design. — Edit: After getting a bunch of comments about this: “Product design” refers to digital product design. If you are an industrial designer who is confused / butt-hurt that digital product designers are using the title originally meant for you, please know that you have been kicked out of this circle. …

We all measure success metrics when it comes to our designs, but have we stopped to think about measuring success for our very own design careers? Success is a very difficult list of conditions to define. I struggled a lot writing this because of the realisation of how personalised one’s…

And why you don’t need to be a design manager to be considered successful — There is nothing I hate more than bad managers who breathe down your neck as you’re trying to design something. “I think it’s better if you put that button there” or “We should use orange for this graphic because it feels better” are just some of the comments that would…

An open letter to those joining the industry wearing rose-coloured glasses — When I wrote my article, “Still can’t get a UX job? Give up”, it was unsurprisingly met with a lot of controversy. I get asked why I always seem so negative with my views, and why I seemingly won’t stop discouraging people from joining the industry. Look, guys. My perspectives…

The struggle of UX designers continues with this controversial topic of diversifying or finding a niche — I wrote a while ago that designers shouldn’t fall into the UX generalist trap, and that article was targeted specifically at struggling, unemployed UX professionals and junior designers for 2022’s bullish hiring market. It didn’t sit well with me after; while I know specialising or framing your unique offerings will…

Ageism isn’t the problem, our self-sabotaging mindsets are. — I never called myself senior until I’ve clocked in 6 years of actual experience in the UX field. It was a heavy thing to do, because of the amount of judgement you’ll subject yourself to when you have the audacity to label yourself as one. With my usual honest, yet…