All images included with kind permission from Daniel Britton. An Image of a typeface that depicts the word Dyslexia.

The UX mindset: how dyslexia led me to UX design

I’m Jordan Cupples, a UX design trainee at Kainos. I also have dyslexia. In this blog, I explain how being dyslexic has shaped my education and career, and helped me become the designer I am today.

Defining dyslexia

Dyslexia can be a complex condition to define because it affects people differently. However, in general, people with dyslexia may struggle to read, write, and spell.

As you can imagine, this can not only make someone’s career more difficult, but also affect their day-to-day life. But I’m here to tell you about my journey to design and show that it’s not all bad! In fact, my dyslexia has played a big role in getting me to where I am today.

As a famous director with dyslexia once said:

“It is more common than you can imagine. You are not alone. And while you will have this the rest of your life, you can dart between the raindrops to get to where you want to go and it will not hold you back” — Steven Spielberg

Life at school — playing to my strengths

From the outside, it can feel like most people’s journey from education to career is a straight line. But, for me, it was never that simple. I didn’t plan out a career from early on in my life, nor was one planned out for me. I’m not a fan of the term, but I was diagnosed with dyslexia when I was 8. This meant, even though it wasn’t said, that there were not a lot of academic expectations placed on me from the start.

As a result, I went through primary school and most of secondary school with a very relaxed approach, not overly worried about my grades. But this drastically changed when I began to think about leaving school and getting a job. At this stage, I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do, other than something I enjoyed. Luckily, this was always something my family encouraged me to pursue.

So, in my last few years at school, I intuitively gravitated towards the subjects that interested me and in which I seemed to naturally excel — Art, Design and Technology. These areas just felt right, and my choice to pursue my interest was reinforced when I was chosen to be head boy due to my attitude and work ethic.

I didn’t know at the time, but these subjects and natural skills would shape my future. Combined, they would give me the knowledge to choose the right path once it was presented to me.

An Image designed by Daniel Britton that depicts the alphabet using the original typeface and his dyslexic version.

At university — discovering design

After getting my grades, I enrolled in a foundation course at Ulster University in Belfast. I still wasn’t sure exactly what I wanted to do, but the course let me study lots of different creative modules — from fine art to animation.

It was on this course that I found my feet when I attended a lecture on Interaction Design by Dr Kyle Boyd. This was an area I’d never heard of, yet when he spoke about it, I felt like I had a connection with it. He spoke about designing for the user and how small things such as font, colour and even layout could make a difference to users’ experience and the overall accessibility of what they use.

While this is all obvious to me now, at the time it blew my mind and made me question a lot of services that I struggled to use as someone with dyslexia. From that point on, I knew I wanted to pursue a career in design.

Interaction Design brought together all the aspects I was interested in, studied at school and was naturally drawn to. It brought the creativity that I loved about art. It had the design methodology, which linked to my study of Technology and Design. It also had links to digital technology that I was very interested in as part of my ICT classes.

I felt like my eyes had been opened — this was what I wanted to do. I then went on to study Interaction Design at Ulster for the next 4 years, and finally figured out what kind of jobs I had the potential to excel in.

An Image designed by Daniel Britton shows a small paragraph that uses his Typeface.

Dyslexia and the UX mindset

Due to my struggle with dyslexia, I seemed to naturally have interpersonal skills and empathy for users. It also became clear that I’d developed strong problem-solving skills by overcoming common dyslexic hurdles every day.

These are strengths that for a long time I wasn’t aware I had, but eventually recognised in myself. They instinctively guided me towards becoming a UX Designer, and they continue to help me in my career.

In fact, I now know that there are lots of common hidden strengths of dyslexia that can be really beneficial for a career in UX design.

Some examples include:

· Creativity — to create innovative solutions and offer fresh perspectives on problems

· Dimensional/Visual thinking — to visualise layouts and design intuitive user interfaces

· Empathy — to understand and relate to users’ diverse pain points, wants and needs, and design solutions that help them address these

· Narrative reasoning — to visualise and map out user journeys, write compelling user stories, and create coherent designs

So, if you’re in a similar position to me, with similar interests and strengths, consider a career in UX (you might even like to look out for upcoming graduate opportunities at Kainos). You never know — it could be the perfect fit for you!

Don’t hold yourself back

I wanted to finish by saying that, if you worry that dyslexia or any other neurodivergence will hold you back — don’t! Due to the skills and traits it’s given me, my dyslexia has helped me discover a career that I love, where I get to use my natural talents every day.

So remember that whatever struggle you may have doesn’t have to be a chain. For everything you may feel is holding you back, trust that you have other, hidden strengths that you can rely on to get you where you’re meant to be.

Many thanks to Kerstin Mackley, Jenny Pendriss and Tricia Dever for inspiring me and helped shape this blog post.