Why I left Fine Arts to become a UX Designer

Vienna Chen
Jul 21, 2017 · 2 min read
All images via Pexels

So my journey into UX, like most it would seem, is an unusual one.

I decided to study art after realising my passions lay in creating meaningful works driven by creativity but more importantly having the ability to understand that contemporary art is looking through someone else’s lens. It was such a relief after having studied 4 years of science as my undergraduate to be able to engage in the right side of my brain.

Fast forward 3 years and I’m doing my Masters of Art at the University of New South Wales. It was during my last semester I did a subject called Research Foundations and the Arts. At the time it sounded like just another theory subject I had to get through and anyway, who’s ever heard the words ‘research’ and ‘art’ being put together in a sentence?

I hated it.

We had to pitch our self assigned “problems” to the class and over the next ten weeks implement research methodologies to attempt to understand the problem. The entire time I felt like I was stumbling around in the dark with my arms out flailing, trying desperately to grasp onto something concrete but finding no purchase. I had no idea why I was doing it and I had no idea where I was going.

I hated it.

And then all of a sudden, right at the end I got my lightbulb moment. Whether I’d just realised that I had my eyes closed the entire time or that I was given a new set of eyes everything I had been doing made sense. And I had never seen Art from this perspective before. I was bewildered that research had helped inform my creative practice.

Suddenly, I loved it.

But then I was bombarded with major works and deadlines and Christmas and holidays and I forgot all about it.

Enter stage, Facebook. The algorithm must have worked out that I was a possible candidate that would’ve been mildly interested in attending a General Assembly UX information session. The algorithm was correct. Without really having any idea what ‘UX’ was I attended an info night…

The rest as they say… is still happening :)

Stay tuned!

)

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