My Anecdote of Becoming a User Experience Engineer
Several months ago, How I Got My Job approached me to write about my journey as a UX Designer. They took an interview from me. Also, In my design life, people often wanted to know about my career story & guidance. Personally, I am a lazy person. But I thought it would be amazing if I could inspire people through my writings and give them some guidance. They published my interview here. So Here I am sharing the same interview for the medium readers with some improvements.
Tell us a bit about yourself.
Hello, My name is ATIQUR RAHAMAN. Right now, I work as a User Experience Lead in an Amsterdam-based company named Tutubi. Tutubi offers beauty treatments for men and women at homes, offices, hotels, or salons. They are focusing on the physical appearance aspect of one’s life. Men or women, whatever their beauty needs are, Tutubi will play an important role. They help people look at their best. My responsibilities are to improve user experiences, organize the whole design process with design systems & also streamline the design rollout process. I also talk about UX Design on my own youtube channel UX Talks with Atiq. I am mentoring people worldwide through my experience & learning in Adplist.
How was your University time?
The beginning of my story was different from others. I studied Urban & Regional Planning at an Engineering University. But I’m not fond of this subject at all. In South Asian countries, sometimes parents force their children to choose topics for study in university. Unfortunately, the same thing happened to me. I always wanted to learn new things about technology. And I also loved to design. As I didn’t like my subject so much I didn’t study.
Why did you choose a career in this field?
At the age of 5 or 6, I used to draw feature phones in my exercise books with redesigned buttons. I worked as a graphic designer for numerous programs on my campus and freelance sites at the university. But I was missing something. I wasn’t satisfied with it. I had a feeling that I needed to grow more. In my university life, I always wanted to be an entrepreneur. We had our team named “Icarus.” In university, we worked on some ideas & built some mobile applications. Some of the applications went popular & national newspapers covered us.
I designed the user interfaces in those applications. At this time, I knew very little about UX. But I found this interesting. I realized that it was my missing part. So I started to gather knowledge in this area by reading books & blogs etc. I, with some of my friends, founded our own tech company after my university education. We have our investors & everything. We were very excited & started working on our tech products. Our first idea was to create an open platform for food reviews. So we began to work on it.
I began to apply my design ideas in this project which I had gathered from the past. After working for about one year, the project was postponed due to funding-related issues.
What was your first job or nuggets from jobs you had that helped you get to where you are today?
As a result, I was depressed for weeks. Cause It was like a dream project for me. I was one of the founders, but I had to postpone. Then I started to regain my confidence gradually & applied for the post of UX Designer in multiple companies. In the meantime, I continued my freelance projects. Then I got a job as a UX Designer in Dingi Technologies Limited, the largest local map company in Bangladesh. Dingi sells map API to other tech companies. (Ex. Ride-Sharing Services, Online Shopping… etc.). Dingi also has its own in-house products. There are more than 10 products (App as well as web) to work on. It was a massive opportunity to craft designs for so many products, both for B2B and B2C. I learned a lot about the targeted user difference, how to build a product for different demography. Firoz Ahmad, a talented UX Designer in Dingi helped me a lot in this process. We have our design system to maintain this wide range of products.
Besides working in Dingi, I also started to nurture my freelance side. But this time, not on any platform. I built my portfolio site & hosted it to show my works. I participated in design challenges from numerous sites & won them.
These gave me the spotlight & reach to the clients. Among those visitors, some contacted me through my site for their project. This was my process to get side projects as well as to maintain my main job. As the client always contacts me, I don’t need to waste time on any platforms. After spending a year in Dingi, I got a call from SELISE Digital Platforms. They said they saw my portfolio on the web & they had an opening for a User Experience Engineer position. They want to start the interview process If I am interested in this. I replied, “Yes.” After several procedures, I joined SELISE in June 2020 during a pandemic situation. SELISE has global clients from all around the world.
I am now serving as a User Experience Designer in the Fintech department. Every month I get a massive number of job offers from multiple companies. Working at SELISE Digital Platforms for 1 year, I was thinking of going for remote jobs. Also, I felt my growth in knowledge is paused. I felt the necessity of a better work environment with a greater opportunity to work in a product-centric company. For that, I knew I had to search globally to find the desired one. So, I took a break from my job which is pretty uncommon here. Normally people try for a new job while they are in another job. But I also wanted to give myself some time to organize myself. In the meantime, I prepared my portfolio & applied for some jobs. As usual, got some rejections at first. Then I started learning from the mistakes that I did. During this period, I got job offer from Tutubi about the opportunity of working as a “User Experience Lead”. Tutubi is an Amsterdam-based startup that offers beauty treatments for men and women at homes, offices, hotels, or salons. They are focusing on the physical appearance aspect of one’s life. Men or women, whatever their beauty needs are, Tutubi will play an important role. They help people look at their best.
Since it was a startup & they were starting from the very beginning I was highly interested in this. I attended their recruitment process & joined as UX Lead here. My responsibilities are to improve user experiences, organize the whole design process with design systems & also streamline the design rollout process.
How did you prepare for the interview?
As I had the experience of working for products with product ownership in my own previous company, It was my advantage. Because I had the opportunity to learn from my product. And as a UX Designer, it’s essential to work with actual products. Actual products always have different requirements than concept products. Knowing about your design is necessary. I have a habit of reading books. So reading UX books helped me a lot to know about product design, its constraints & other factors. I also have enough knowledge about the development process. This also helps to align your design with devs. Keeping an eye on the newest trend also helps. That was my preparation before the interview.
Can you provide some book recommendations?
As a UX Designer, It’s necessary to read on a daily basis. Here are some of my book recommendations:
- Don’t Make Me Think, Revisited: A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability
- Hooked: How to Build Habit-Forming Products
- The Design of Everyday Things
- Lean UX: Applying Lean Principles to Improve User Experience
- 100 Things Every Designer Needs to Know About People
Things are changing very fast in the industry; how do you keep yourself updated?
Yes. Things are changing fast in the industry. But in UX, some things are timeless. But it would be best if you kept pace with the latest tech to learn. As tech is improving day by day there is always a chance of creating new solutions from them. I keep myself updated with recent design trends, researching their limitations, reading blogs, books, etc.
Any advice about CVs?
- Remove irrelevant information from your CV.
- Be specific about describing your role in each position
- Show your achievements, impacts of your designs
- Try to show products that are live/hosted. It is impactful.
- A clean-looking CV also makes good impressions.
Advice for someone looking for a job?
- Try to learn fundamental skills rather than running with trends.
- Make yourself a brand, start contributing to the community, and help people.
- Experience in specific tools can save you a lot of time.
- Development knowledge also helps in teamwork. It also helps to know restrictions.
- Knowing about business helps you to grow your company financially.
- As a UX Designer, you have to be an open-minded, team player.
Why do you think you were selected among other candidates?
From my own startup, I knew a lot about business. It also helps to empathize as a product owner. Also, working on real products gave me a plus. I always try to design in a meaningful way rather than making them visually stunning.
Lessons from jobs that you couldn’t get
After postponing my first startup, I was depressed. It affected me in various ways & I was rejected from some of the jobs. It would help if you were confident enough to prove yourself.
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