🍨 The Inside Scoop — Prakarn Nisarat 🇹🇭
Get to know your mentors: Prakarn Nisarat
Welcome to ADPList’s mentor interview series 🎉
My hope is that these interviews will serve as a useful resource for mentees who are looking and getting to know their mentors on our platform 💬
- The amazing design mentor: Prakarn Nisarat
- Pet lover: Cat, Dog, Goldfish, Hamster in that order
- Current favorite song: BUMP of CHICKEN — Acacia
- Currently binge-watching: Love Death + Robot
- Current favorite movie(s): Josee, the Tiger, and the Fish
👋 Hi Prakarn, can you share a little bit about yourself?
Right now, I’m currently working as a senior product designer at Lululemon. I’m also doing the interim UX manager and filling in for my old manager, who just moved to Trello.
Before coming to lululemon, I worked for Facebook, building the Assistant developer platform similar to Alex console where developers come in to build anything assistant inside Facebook.
Before that, I worked at Novo Nordisk — one of the biggest insulin companies in the world, designing digital health with their insulin pens and other connected devices.
Other places I’ve worked before include Microsoft, University of Washington, Office of Head Start, and a few other places.
Tell me something that would never come up in conversation?
I’m just not that into Hollywood movies — even before COVID-19. The last one I saw was the first Avenger and I watched that on the plane.
What was the pandemic hobby that you picked up?
We adopted a British Shorthair cat (Merlin) last year after Christmas.
I’m super happy we got him and he brought such joy to our lives. Now that we’re going back to the office soon, I’m concerned about how to transition him to being alone during the day.
Right now he just shadows me everywhere.
Where did you get him? 🐱
We actually drove down from Seattle to Oregon and picked him up from the cattery. Yeah, that was fun. We drove there and had to get home as soon as possible so he didn’t have to stay in the carrier for too long.
What kind of impact are you making in the world using your design skills?
Remember that healthcare work? It helps people be healthier and improve their health and quality of life — say not going blind or getting their legs amputated due to high blood sugar. But it comes with the big design responsibility.
You have to design everything correctly because if patients make mistakes, it could be fatal — at worse, death.
In my case, we made an app that syncs with a connected insulin pen and lets people remember their doses and upload them to doctors. So if I made design mistakes, they could be like… “Oh, I did not take my insulin yet” and it will lead to double dosing. And that’s called adverse events.
If you’ve seen in the news that someone passed out and crashed their car due to low blood sugar, that could happen if I don’t design it correctly.
What kind of mentorship do you wish to provide and why?
I have always been mentoring. To date, I’ve been teaching for more than 14 years now.
My goal of teaching is improving people’s lives to help them know better.
If they ask questions, it’s my job to make sure that they understand it thoroughly — sometimes students thought it was a bit harsh and difficult.
I have a student who was in my class four years prior actually came back to me when he was about to graduate, and he told me “I’m so sorry for being a jerk in your class.” I was, like, I don’t remember you being a jerk. We had discussions.
But anyway, I’m so happy for you that you got a job and everything and now you’re growing up.
Tell me about a time when you didn’t know if you would make it and how you overcame it?
The time that I was transitioning to UX design basically. So, I started off as a graphic designer before becoming a UX designer and I had no idea what the process was like.
I just go to lynda.com (currently LinkedIn learning) and just learn everything myself, from design to coding.
I’m so jealous of you all that you have ADPList now where anyone can have access to many awesome mentors.
I wish I had that when I was during the career transition.
Microsoft was probably the first place that was giving me a chance to be a UX designer. It was quite difficult doing the UX audit across multiple platforms during MS Teams launched.
But it forced me to learn a ton by collaborating with many other designers and teams because I had to go talk to them and work with them all the time.
What are the three most common questions you get as a mentor, and how do you usually answer them?
1.The first question I get asked is “How am I going to be able to get a job when I’m in the career transition?”
I usually say, “Hey, you can get a job and don’t sell yourself short!”
You have all the skills from previous jobs that others do not have — use that expertises in your field and makes yourself stand out.
That’s what makes you — YOU — embrace it.
2. “How can I build a portfolio? Can you critique my portfolio?”
When it comes to your portfolio, people often think it’s just a normal website, like you can just put everything together and be done with it.
Actually, NO, you have to think of it as a design problem.
You need to think about the user who basically is using them, like a recruiter or hiring manager.
What is a pain point, what needs to be done? How can you cater to that? Because you are selling the service.
3. “How to present my portfolio?”
Make sure you practice, practice, practice. And tell them a good story.
Also, It’s not just about your work and your skill.
Remember, they hire you because they want someone that has people skills too.
They are basically hiring their coworkers that are going to spend 8 hours a day working together. How do you show that during the interviews?
If there is one thing you could tell every single mentee you meet, what would that one piece of advice be?
Anything that you do could impact someone’s life.
For example, an hour that you spend with somebody can drastically change their lives for the better.
Kind of like how one of my students came back to me because I spent an hour with her after class.
She basically got a job as a front-end developer/designer because of that one hour I spent advising her.
When they come back to you, and then they tell you that thing, that’s like the biggest payoff you ever get from anything.
I will probably put this in my top accomplishments in my life.
Learn how to transition into UX and do your design skills with Prakarn —
🤙 Feel free to book a call with Prakarn on ADPList: Link here
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