Transitioning from engineering to UX to product design: My story of 5 years
By: Mehek Kapoor
Tags: Storytelling, Learning, UX, UX Design, Design

2015: the time I didn’t know what UX design was?

I was an engineer, before I even knew what UX design actually was. The term was new and unfamiliar. I didn’t know that a job like that even exists. So, how was I introduced to it?

My mentor and a professor who were judges of our final thesis, saw my front-end coding skills in our project, and told me that I should go for exams like — NID, CEED or NIFT.

Having no clue about what these jargons were, I googled them all the moment I got back home, completely forgetting that I had one more semester of my engineering college left.

As I googled the details, I discovered that the last date of filling the form for CEED exam is tomorrow. I didn’t know what the exam was about. I didn’t know how to prepare for it. I didn’t have any mentorship or tutor with me to clear the exam, and the exam was in less than two months. It was October and the exam was scheduled in first week of December, back in 2015. I filled the form, paid the fees and did the same with NID and NIFT.

In India, IITs (Indian Institute of Technologies) are a big deal, and when it comes to design, NID (National Institute of Design) and NIFT (National Institute of Fashion Technology) are equally big.

Tag plays an important role in your career ahead. At least that’s what we thought till 2015. The perspective was about to change, as the next five years were to be absolutely unpredictable and eye-opening for me.

The dreadful design entrance exams

Having no clue about what they’d ask in a design exam, I started looking for previous year question-papers. Being an engineer, that’s how we had learnt to crack things. Reverse engineering.

Googling, searching and looking for things, I stumbled upon some Facebook groups that were offering help to students across the country, who were preparing for CEED, and there were some people who were in IITs right now, and who were mentoring their potential juniors. God bless technology! I found two such amazing people (one of them is working as a Senior Designer in Microsoft India), who helped me a lot.

I started the preparation in late October, around the time I had filled the form, and realised I had just one month to prepare as the exam was on 06th December that year. I was busy with my thesis project, but continued preparing for CEED exam by the side. I was determined to get into one of the IITs, or NIDs. NIFT on the other hand, was a back-up (I am being honest here!).

Fast forward to early 2016, results were announced and I had flunked both CEED and NID. The exams I was so determined to give. The exams I had almost depend my life upon. I was depressed, but NIFT result was yet to be announced. I was graduating from my college in a few months, and if I didn’t get into a college, I might have to take-up a job or worse — drop one year out and prepare for design entrances again!

I didn’t want to do either of them. Didn’t want to work in a field I was least interested in, and definitely didn’t want to waste a year just for preparing for exams again.

I pinned all my hopes to the back-up, and it didn’t disappoint me. I scored 70-AIR (All India Rank) in NIFT which was a big deal, because thousands of applicants appear for such exams, and getting a rank in top-100 means something. I got admitted into NIFT for master’s and that’s where I spent next two years of my life, trying to become a ‘Masters in Design’.

2017: The internship and the first job as a UX Designer

The turning point in my life arrived, when I joined an internship in Bangalore, in a company named ‘Peepal Design’. I was confused between UX Research and UX Design, and thought I’d intern as a researcher and figure things out later. Peepal Design was technically the first job of my life.

As a research-intern, I was exposed to all the methodologies and processes that researchers utilise to arrive at results. I learnt the tactics of interviewing users, conducting focused group discussions and understanding human psychology by ethnographic research, creating user personas and more.

It would be an understatement to say that it was fun. I have never enjoyed myself working like that ever since! The work behind the scenes was too hard, and I enjoyed every bit of it.

I salute and respect all the researchers of the world out there — you are doing an amazing job!

After three months of working as a research intern, I knew that it wasn’t something I can build my career into (no offence to researchers, but research wasn’t for me, or at least I thought so). That’s when I thought that I would also work as a UX designer, to see what they have to do and how is it different from a core-research job. And maybe, then I would decide if I want to get into research or design. Exploration was the key.

Finally, I joined my first full-time job, after graduating from college. I was given the role of being the UX designer in a healthcare tech start-up in Pune (Maharashtra). That was the company where I learnt the basics of everything, from researching other products to designing screens, prototypes, demos, design handoffs to the developers, working in teams and more. I learnt a lot in six months, and soon got a better opportunity in a custom app development company in Hyderabad (Telangana), and the role was more inclined towards product design.

2018: The transition into product design

I always thought that UX and product design are similar jobs, as a UX designer also designs a digital product. But oh, I was so wrong! When I was hired for a junior position in this company, I was clueless about a lot of things.

But eventually my manager (who is undoubtedly the coolest manager on the planet!) was supportive, helpful and even strict when it required. She was someone who I give complete credit to, for transforming my career to a great extent.

I didn’t know what was coming ahead, but she prepared me for it in advance. With her, I used to work closely on everything, from creating product roadmaps, to delivering pitch-presentation to clients and potential customers. From conducting design sprints in her absence, to monitoring product delivery. That was the time I understood the real difference between UX and product design.

That was also the time my boyfriend moved to The Netherlands, and our wedding was a hot topic in both the families. Although I didn’t want to leave the company, but I was left with no choice. I discussed working remotely, but couldn’t work out for out for us or the project, so I resigned and started looking for a job in Netherlands.

Once I was here, I didn’t care whether I got a UX role or a product role, because in the beginning, I just wanted a job to see how differently things are done in European companies, compared to Indian companies.

I was clueless about the culture, the people, the role, the technologies and the collaborations that were a part of a designer’s daily life. I saw some videos of designers from Amsterdam and Netherlands, just to understand how their routine life looks like, but at the end, it didn’t help much because the culture varies from company to company.

A small start-up with no design team, would work very differently than an established company with a big design team.

So, when I was interviewing for various companies here, I only tried to talk about the experiences that were relevant to the roles. Finally, I was selected to work for NextPax Travel & Technology in March 2020, but soon a world-wide lockdown was announced, and we were in the middle of a global pandemic.

2020: Coronavirus and some upsides of working remotely

This year has been a hell of a ride for everyone I can imagine. And it was not different for me either. It was only one week of work, before a lockdown occurred and everyone was forced to work from home, back in March this year, and after that it kind-of became a lifestyle for everyone.

The most challenging part was remote user-interviews and feedback sessions, because you can’t see what they’re feeling, video-calls are surely not as good as actual in-person meet-ups, and we had to rely a lot on ‘what they said’, rather than analysing what they’ve been feeling while using the product, which is more important.

But somehow, we are sailing through this time with the rest of the world, overcoming the challenges and learning from mistakes. User research has been one of the toughest things to accomplish in 2020 for many designers and researchers alike, and remote user testing will become mainstream in future as well.

The difficulties have rather opened new doors for researchers, as remote user testing can be performed with any user, even the one sitting on a beach in Hawaii, sipping margarita!