DESIGNER SPOTLIGHT #1
Hope Idaewor on Landing a Job at Microsoft and Her Aspirations for the Community of Africans in Design
Hope Idaewor is a phenomenal creative currently working as a Design Researcher at Microsoft’s HQ in Redmond, Washington. As a proud Nigerian-American designer, Hope has a strong passion to use her craft to effect change on the continent and beyond.
We had an insightful chat with Hope as she shared her story on landing a job at Microsoft, her views on what it means to decolonize design, and her aspiration for the international and continent-based African design communities to start working together on design initiatives that can better our continent. Here’s what she had to say.
Tell us a fun fact about yourself.
I just had my first baby, so that’s been pretty exciting! It’s been interesting experiencing motherhood for the first time but still getting ready to go back to work and figuring out how to manage both.
Tell us about your design story and how you got started.
Yeah, definitely. I was interested in art, illustration, and graphics from a young age, which eventually got me interested in Computer Science in college. But after I graduated and started working as a software developer, I noticed that I was really missing that understanding of how the work I did would impact the people actually going to use it. Do they enjoy using it? How does this affect the brand? What does this product say about the brand and the target market? I soon realized that I was interested in the human aspect of Computer Science and that my role was not the right place to bring up those questions.
So I went back to do my master’s in HCI because I wanted to better understand design from a critical lens. Yeah, that’s really my design story. I love being able to understand why we make design decisions, and how to make these decisions based on what would really help the story of the people that we’re trying to design for.
What was your transition from coding to design like? Did taking a masters in HCI prepare you for your role in design?
The transition was a little bit difficult at first because the UX field was already getting saturated and without a differentiator, some unique skill, or a different way of thinking, it was hard to sell yourself especially with no prior experience in UX. So that was my struggle.
I read a lot, went to UX meetups in Atlanta, and did everything I could to kind of put myself out there. I also interviewed at a lot of places, but at the interviews, it would still always boil down to people wanting more experienced hires.
Because of that, I decided to go back to school and really dive deep into learning about UX and how to set myself apart. Looking back, I don’t necessarily think I needed to go to school, and most likely would have gotten a job if I did personal projects and kept interviewing for a few months, maybe even a year.
But I think grad school really helped me broaden my understanding of what was out there when it came to the different ideologies and principles of UX, and then it helped me create my own grounding, what I believed in, and what I wanted to stand for as a designer.
What was your process of securing an opportunity to work in design in big tech? How did you land your job at Microsoft?
Honestly, it was God first — from positioning to timing and all. But I also think the way I thought and talked about design was what really attracted my manager. Our first conversation was during an informational interview and although she didn’t have any positions open at the time, she noted my name down because she loved our conversation. She loved that I thought differently from others at Microsoft and once a role opened up, she immediately recommended me because she believed I’d be able to push boundaries.
Being able to really develop my sense of why, understand how western ideology shapes the way we think about design, and talk about decolonizing design to take the perspective of the people who are gonna be affected were key factors that really helped me land my position.
How has your African identity affected your experience at Microsoft?
I don’t know if it’s affected my experience at Microsoft so far since I’ve only been there a short while so I haven’t really gotten into broader conversations about design past my day-to-day work.
But if anything, I think in grad school, I was always advocating for localizing design rather than globalizing it and would try to get people to understand what it meant to design for a place like Nigeria. So for instance, if a designer wants to use a color palette to design a taxi service in Nigeria, they should do some research to understand what kind of colors would make sense to the people there. Does green mean ‘go’ or something else? Basically doing the work to make sure that we’re localizing and respecting the culture and ideology in that place.
What are some perspectives that African designers abroad have?
I’ve had a lot of conversations with African designers and researchers here who are interested in working together to create something to better our continent. We’re trying to figure out how we can collaborate and put together some sort of initiative to, for instance, educate more Nigerians on design, or to improve things like infrastructure and other issues with design solutions.
But what I’ve noticed, even with myself, is that there’s always a gap of knowledge on what the current state of design is on the continent. I mean I could speak for Nigeria. I know that there are lots of designers in Lagos and there’s a huge design community that’s rising up in UX which is amazing, but I haven’t seen a lot of community building or initiatives to bridge the 2 communities of African designers abroad and African designers on the continent.
I really don’t see a lot of crossover at all in these 2 communities, and I don’t know what the reason for that is because there’s a lot of opportunity for collaboration between the 2 communities.
What is your vision for the global community of African designers?
That’s a great question. My vision for African designers, at least those abroad, is to see and be a part of creating products that are building up the African community both abroad and in the different countries on the continent. How do we create products to educate ourselves and bring our communities together so that we can grow together and support our families, friends, and people in our industry back at home as well. I think it would be amazing to see partnerships between designers in America and Africa who are creating products to tell our stories better.
What is an opinion you have about design that most people might disagree with?
Generally, I think that we should focus more on designing for underserved communities and highlighting spaces where design has failed minorities.
I think a lot of people have a more of a global view of saying “Let’s make sure design brings everyone together” because that’s safer and better for business and that’s an easier conversation to have.
At the end of the day, when you’re in the corporate world, design decisions always come down to data and how to capitalize on trends. But my opinion is that we should focus on the data points that appear to be insignificant more, and sometimes when data tells us no, we should go for it because that might just be our differentiator and how we change mindsets.
