My career adventures: from graphic to product designer through 5 breakpoints
TL;DR: This is the story of my professional life (until now). Over a decade of small shifts that showed me that we never quite know what is our professional purpose until we actually find it (which can take a long time, but, with the right mindset, work and effort, it will eventually become true).
I still have to work for more than 5 decades, but the first one was pretty bumpy. Until now. But let’s start through the beginning.
Breakpoint #1 — Choosing Design
On my High School days, I chose to be a Civil Engineer. I wanted to build stuff for other people to enjoy using. But by the time of graduation, I changed my mind. “What I really want is to communicate ideas to people. Visually. I want to shape messages.”
So I decided I wanted to be a designer. Graphic Designer. Or at least that’s what I thought I wanted to be… During college I became a real Graphic Design lover. I bought lots of Books and Magazines, went to lots of Conferences and experimented a lot. So even before my graduation in Communication Design (2006), I started working as a freelancer.
In 2006, the web was starting to boom. But only about 54% of the developed countries population was using internet*. So Graphic Design, particularly, the one that used paper as the means to pass messages, was the thing. And TBH, I was pretty confident that, in time, I would become a great graphic designer, and I would be able to shape amazing messages. Apparently, I couldn’t be more wrong…
*Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet#History
Breakpoint #2 — From Graphic to Retail Design, or the first touchpoint with UX.
Between 2006 and 2008 I worked with a College friend who shared my Graphic Design beliefs. But in these years, a lot happened in the digital world. The iPhone was born in June of 2007. The 3G version came the next year, in July 2008, the web users were quickly growing. Paper Design was loosing power to the new Digital trend.
I was born and raised in the lovely Porto, Portugal. And despite the fact that I love to travel, I never wanted to adventure myself in living abroad. As the Graphic Design market was diminishing, so was our work.
At this point the opportunity came along, but in the shape of a big change in my career path: I was going to work in a multidisciplinary team of Retail Design. We were a brand new team of 5, all from different backgrounds: architecture, visual merchandising, interior design, graphic design, all hired by a big supermarket company that wanted to change traditional retail spaces into something new, fresh, different.
I was completely unaware of this at that time, but that was my first contact with “User Experience”. That team’s purpose was to provide customers the best possible in-store experience. We were thinking in the customer journey, the emotional connection with the store, ways to make the customer want to come back and become loyal to our spaces.
But after almost 3 years, I needed something different. I wasn’t happy anymore, retail was much more about architecture and interior design than it was about visual design. And in the middle of 2011 I still hoped I could do graphic design, so I decided it was time to move on.
Breakpoint #3—Joining the web (r)evolution
By the time I was leaving this company, a great friend of mine, web designer at the time, was also leaving his job at a Marketing Agency. We talked, discussed and thought that if we joined forces, we could do good work together.
My friend was always in love with the web. He was a self taught designer and a handyman developer. But he wanted to improve his design and development skills for the web while I was still more focused on print.
In late 2011, despite the fact that already 68% of the developed countries population was using internet, we had more printed work and only one website to do every 2 or 3 months… but a couple of years later… Things changed, oh boy if they did…
By 2015, that number was already on 77% globally, and we were already working 80% digital vs 20% print. During these 4 years I learned so much… I was evangelized by my friend. Our clients were demanding web products, and so I started designing them. But I also learn some basic coding skills. We were only 2 and my friend couldn’t handle everything by himself. So I did a basic HTML+CSS Course with the awesome Tiago Pedras where I learned the basics. After that, Luís Braga, my friend, associate and mentor, taught me lots of things about HTML, CSS, LESS, SCSS, Bootstrap, all the guts from Wordpress, some basic RoR architecture, and he even tried Javascript and PHP (no success here TBH). He also advised me to do online courses to learn the mechanics of the web and without being aware, again, this was the beginning of my Product Design career.
Breakpoint #4—The startup adventure
On March of 2015, I travelled to India. Travelling is one of my biggest passions, but that is a whole other story… The point here is that, in these 3 weeks I was away, Luís was left alone. Work was not at the top force at that time, so he had some free time. We already had discussed a potencial idea for a startup product, and he was also trying to learn something new. So as a playground, he decided to build a web app using ruby on rails, which he was starting to learn at the time.
When I came back he had a working prototype ready. I was immediately amazed by what he had achieved in so little time and I wanted to contribute, and so I started working with him on functionalities, features, user journeys, the experience… Soon we had an MVP ready and being tested with a real client, and around 150 active users. We were seeing we actually just built a real digital product, and people were using it and enjoying this new experience we had just provided them with!
In November 2016 I was so interested in this topic, that I attended my first Training in UX/UI EDIT. Porto, in collaboration with real Digital Agencies. I learned a lot, specially from Diana Santos (EDIT) and André Oliveira (Pixelmatters) and at this point, UX, UI and Digital Products were my one and only focus. I also joined the Interaction Design Foundation where I started learning about Usability, Psychology and other UX focused areas.
At the same time we decided to apply it to a Training Course: Startups School @ UPTEC — Porto. We participated in the course, did a final public presentation and won the Vodafone Power Lab award for our product. We got really excited, but by then, the only thing we were really needing was people to work on scaling our product. And that requires… money…
For a couple of months, we had to combine our Design Company with the development, money raising and trying to find people to work on Vaiivem.
Vaiivem (our product) is a communication platform for preschools and kindergartens to communicate with parents and share their kids daily life. We would need thousands of users to start becoming profitable. And no investor wants to invest in something that can take years to return his investment. So after a couple of months trying to solve all these problems we started getting tired. There was no light at the end of this tunnel.
Breakpoint #5—The light in the tunnel, at last!
In March 2017, the Design Company was getting less work, and we were so keen on working on real unique digital products and on creating engaging experiences that we couldn’t do our “old” job properly. So after a peaceful talk, we both decided it was time to end our company, abandon our product and fight for the new careers that Vaiivem helped us discover that we really wanted.
Today, Vaiivem is still up and running on that initial Client. It still serves and simplifies the daily life of 10 teachers, 175 students and 300 parents.
At this time, we both had something clear in our minds. Whatever happened next, from now on he would be a front-end developer and I would be a Product Designer. I wanted to solve user’s problems, to create emotional relations with them and help them have the best possible digital experiences.
So when we decided it was time to move on, we started looking for jobs as such. And we both soon found them.
In July 2017 I started working as a Product Designer in a Travel Agency website. One of the biggest OTAs of the world. I couldn’t be happier. I had just found the right career path for me, and exactly on the industry I love the most: travelling. Pretty much my dream job.
After 1 year of starting at this company I couldn’t be more happy with the choice I made. I am now 35yo. and it took me a little over a decade to find my sweet spot in the design industry. But I found it, and I won’t let it go anytime soon now. I am now part of a fast growing Design Team, and starting to work (and learn) on a Design System.
Going back to the beginning, “I wanted to build stuff for other people to enjoy using” and that’s exactly what I am doing now, not on the physical world but on the digital world.
Today, I’m pretty confident I found my path, but change is part of the process, so in a couple of years, who knows where I will be. We only need to believe that the right opportunity in the right place and the right time will appear some day.
What about you, are you doing what you love?
Thanks for reading.
