From Bootcamp To Full Time Job as a Financial Designer: What I Learned in One Year
How I stopped wearing t-shirts to embraced the tie… ok, joking!
In November 2019, I entered the doors of General Assembly in London. With a bit of emotion and an elephant-size hole in my bank account, I was starting my first UX bootcamp!
Now, more than a year later, I’m living the dream, working as a full-time financial designer for Societe Generale, a lead multinational investment bank. And… I’m finally letting go of the impostor syndrome!
What did I learn in this process? How is reality vs expectations? Would I change anything if I could go back?
Let’s go with order.
From a Bootcamp to the Financial World.
To cut the story short: I studied foreign languages and photography as BA and MA. During my wanderings, I found myself in London and there I experimented different trades. I worked in camera crews for the cinema industry and as a chef for a haute-cuisine French restaurant (in Chelsea obviously).
Though I enjoyed these jobs, I then decided I wanted to do something less “hands on” and more focused on brainstorming, understanding, analyzing. To my wonder I discovered at the same time user experience design and the existence of bootcamps. Though these courses were expensive, I learnt through my local friends about their focus on practical knowledge and industry-aimed curriculum. So I decided to give it a try (and a whole lot of pounds).
Now let’s fast forward to 3–4 months of hard work later. After completing the course, I applied to Societe Generale and started there as a trainee. This was the peak of a learning experience roller coaster that finally led to a full-time position as UX designer within the team!
One Year, Few Projects and Hundreds of Screens Later.
What did I learn during this time, starting out as UX designer? How was the transition from the safe walls of the bootcamp nest to the wide open-spaces of the savanna… whoops… of the corporate office?
1 — Confidence takes time
In just over a year, I changed the way I approach projects and the design process.
Few months in, I ended up working on a full-on project with stakeholders spread across 3 continents — by chance I might say, as it all began with a simple UI review. In the beginning I was constantly at risk of “just executing” the quite imperative requests coming from product owners and various stakeholders.
This proved to be a good challenge. I had to quickly learn how to convincingly explain good design practices to an audience that comprised business analysts, developers, product owners and stakeholders, all of which often had questions and remarks. This made me research and be actively aware of any design choice I made, as it could be challenged by multiple opinions at the same time.
It took time to build the confidence to (kindly) push back requests and criticism while standing by the points I considered vital for a good user experience. But to my surprise, every time I took time and effort to explain the reasons behind my choices, they were understood. Often even praised by those same colleagues who were not convinced at all at the start.
To recap: a constant, important part of the job is to explain and convince your stakeholders about the advantages of good user experience practices. You have to be able to justify clearly your choices and involve your project team in supporting them. What’s more, every opportunity to spread the good-word of the UX approach inside the organization is welcome, be it at a project level or during a coffee break.
2 — Bootcamp Projects vs Advanced Users
During the bootcamp, I was exposed mainly to B2C projects, which were easier to manage and structure. For instance, creating an app to plan travels with friends or a mobile service for people flying with pets.
When I started to work on projects at Societe Generale, I realized the situation was quite different. Most the services we work on have a very targeted and specialized audience. What we call “advanced users”. The product owner of a project is often a key stakeholder and main user as well. Up to now I’ve had the opportunity to work on wildly different and specialized projects. From replacing pen and paper in compliance processes to streamlining funding management. From developing an analytic tool to be used by traders and fund managers to redesigning our company’s org chart.
Working with advanced users can be extremely interesting. They have very clear and specific needs that the design needs to address. They don’t aim to see a luxurious font-family with an elaborate color palette. The goal most often is to use space to let the content perform at its best. Complex amounts of data need to be displayed clearly in a single screen, allowing for multiple operations but without confusing the user. This means that the interface sometimes has to be “complex” — we are not seeking simplification only, but a performance-driven solution.
In short, you can’t design the same way for everyone. The principles that are valid for B2C services and products are not necessarily applicable or relevant in the context of expert financial users. The needs, goals and pain points are different and different is also the solution to solve them. So you need to adapt and change your design approach whenever needed.
Since the goals are clear and everyone has a clear role in these projects, you can finally forget about all the drama and emotional ups and downs of the bootcamp team projects. And don’t tell me you didn’t have any!
3 — Design is only half of the picture
Or maybe even less. During my time at Societe Generale, it became clear to me that a spot-on organization is key for the success of a project and of our team as well.
Everything matters: from how a project is “physically” organized in folders and sub-folders, with an agreed and shared structure, to where the prototype files are located and how their iterations are organized. All of this allows our team to quickly browse through projects and makes teamwork very efficient.
Communication and keeping track of previous decisions is also the key to smooth progression and a golden source for any future issue or complaint. We document every meeting and keep track of them in a file we call the “project flow”. Every decision is then traceable back to its original email thread. An audit trail that makes it incredibly quick to answer questions on past decisions and the development of a project. Even if you never worked on it!
Especially in a big organization where interests can lay across departments and different lines of management, being organized and precise is a top quality that allows us to move forward confidently. If you design amazing solutions but don’t document them well and bury them between folders… *Jaws music slowly getting louder*
Conclusion
In just about a year, I learnt so much and so many things! When I look back at the beginning and my first project, I can picture myself almost as a happy child roaming the world of UX design. Now I am walking upright with a much more experienced view on the challenges ahead. But the learning curve is definitely not ending here. And that’s what makes it in my eyes such an interesting and rewarding profession.
I hope you found this article interesting and that it helped shed some light on the transition between a UX bootcamp and full-time UX role. If you have any question don’t hesitate to get in touch! 😊
I want to thank Morgane for the first inspiration to write this article (and all the feedback on the following iterations). If you want to know how a day as UX designer in our team looks like, check this great article by Heesu “Coffee, Excel and InVision — Inside the Everyday of a Financial UX Designer”.
Thank you for sticking with me through this short journey!
