Jan Castro graduated from UCSD in 2019. He majored in Cognitive Science while getting a minor in design. He currently works as a product designer at Workday working on the People Experience Team. Read our conversation down below to see what he has been up to!
How did you get into design?
I first started out as an undeclared major and discovered design when my friend introduced me to Cognitive Science. I was always fascinated with design but never thought it can be a whole career in a growing industry.
My second year of college is when I really started ramping up my portfolio, networking with other designers, and refining my skills. It wasn’t until the end of my third year where I landed my first design internship at Workday.
What does your typical day look like?
If I would break it down into different points it would look a little something like this:
Arrive at office -> Eat Breakfast -> Go on slack and outlook to check on messages and meetings I need to attend to -> Do some design work on figma (usually to prepare for a test session) -> Meetings -> Lunch -> Ping Pong -> Designing -> Meetings -> Designing -> Dip (around 5)
What’s the biggest difference in designing at a company versus at school?
Managing meetings and communicating to different stakeholders. Back at UCSD, you’re always surrounded with designers. The people you work with in group projects and the people that you present to are most likely very familiar with the design process.
In industry, people come from different backgrounds and disciplines and are most likely not familiar with the values of design. You need to properly communicate the value of design and all the different lingos that go around in the UX world (e.g. usability testing, design sprints, wireframing, etc.). Not everyone is brought into the design process so it helps to explain your methodology and intent behind your decisions.
What’s a design challenge that you recently faced?
Designing meetings and communicating well with different stakeholders. One thing I learned during my first few months at Workday is that you need to have a well thought out meeting. You need to have a plan and an idea on what kind of outcome you want to have.
Read my teammate’s awesome medium article regarding this topic (it’ll help wonders): https://medium.com/workday-design/https-medium-com-workdaydesign-how-to-design-the-ideal-ux-meeting-8784f99e14ca
What tips do you have for new designers?
When working on your craft, focus on ONE thing at a time. As a new designer, it’s always intimidating because there’s always so many skills to work on and so many tools available that it’s hard to just choose one to go with (e.g. should I learn how to code, should I use protopie or invision, blah blah blah … just use figma tbh).
Just choose one skill and be really good at it. Only once you start getting comfortable is when you can start venturing and expanding your tool belt.
Secret skill: knowing how to communicate and tell a good story can bring you far in the design world.
Where do you find inspiration?
Honestly everywhere. From the apps that you use on your phone to the everyday physical things that you use everyday. There’s always an intent to everything. And training to understand and uncover the intent of something is probably the best way you can train by yourself as a designer.
For example, try to understand why the designer placed that button there, why they phrased a dialogue it in that certain way, why they made the flow go from this one screen to another, etc. WHY WHY WHY is the key here (like in Taylor Scott’s 102C class).
Tell us about a project you are most proud of.
For my 102C project, my group redesigned the table layout of the space in front of BK to remove the issue of island tables (one person taking up a whole table by themselves). Although this doesn’t have anything to deal with UI, it did make me practice my intentionality and research skills which I found helpful to this day. It made ask why to everything (ty Taylor).
What was one thing that you learned from UCSD which helped you in your post-undergrad life?
Yes.
Anything else you’d like to share with our readers?
You have a lot of time to figure this out, you got this! Shoutout to Design for America and Design Co because they helped so much during my time at UCSD! Please join them they have awesome people :^)
I don’t have a lot of designs I can share right now (mostly need to scavenge past docs and projects for them), but feel free to check out my portfolio that I’m currently updating (a lot are still under construction so please bare with me): janericdecastro.me
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