#67 Top 3 Key Learnings to get a career in innovation and UX
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Hello friends and welcome back to the future of UX podcast where we explore the future of design, user experience and technology. My name is Patricia Reiners. I'm a UX and innovation designer from Zurich, Switzerland. And this podcast episode will be a little bit more personal.

I got some questions on Instagram, or I'm constantly getting questions on Instagram and social media, where people ask, how did I get into innovation? How did I get into all the future tech topics? And I thought in this podcast episode, I want to talk a little bit about my way into, especially like UX, the future of UX, immersive tech, and how I got into it.

and also share my biggest learnings, my three top learnings of this journey with you. So it will be a little bit more personal, but I hope I can share a lot of helpful insights on the topic.

By the way, for everyone who's interested in new tech and innovation, the future of design, and if you haven't subscribed to the UX newsletter yet, I can highly recommend it. Every two weeks I'm sending out a new newsletter with free sources, with curated information for you. It's completely for free, so you don't need to pay for it. And you can find it in the description box. I can highly recommend it. So how did I get into the future of UX?

First of all, my background is actually communication design. Or maybe I need to start even before that. After school, I started to study bioscience. So as a student or when I was in school, I was always super interested in science, basically, and how the world works. I always wanted to understand how the world works, I think.

basically and I thought like biology and science like this is something like where you learn a lot of the things that you see like your surrounding so I felt like this is amazing an amazing thing for me so I really need to dive into that

But doing studying biology I realized this is a little bit more theoretical and there's a lot of like learning and there's not a lot of time for experimentation. And I felt this is probably not the right choice for me although it was super interesting. I mean biology I think is an amazing subject and super exciting. We also had a lot of like chemistry and physics.

So I think it was definitely interesting. But for me, the creativity was a little bit missing. So I decided to switch to communication design, which I thought is pretty much like advertisement. So I always saw myself being selfless.

somewhere where someone working in advertisement creating campaigns working in a little bit like marketing or something like that and I was always very excited about that because I think it's so much related to also psychology how to communicate with people how to transfer certain messages so I started to study communication design in Mainz in Germany at the Hochschule

And the focus there was basically print design. So we had a huge focus on how to design posters, basically graphic design, how to design books, editorial design, print design, all these kind of things. Typography as well. We did some exploration around art and basically creativity. So it was pretty much focused on print design.

I was not so much into graphic design and into print design. So I decided to do an internship in an advertisement agency. Actually, I did two internships in two different advertisement agencies. For me, I felt like this is a bit more, you know, targeted to the user. You really do something for people. Although graphic design is, of course, you also do something for people. But I felt with advertisement, there's like a lot of research involved and a lot of

I don't know, a lot of thoughts, a lot of concepts. And yeah, I don't know. I was really fascinated by advertisement. I always really loved that. So...

I did two internships at an advertising agency and it was, I mean, for me a super fascinating experience. You know, when you were an intern somewhere, maybe some of you still remember your time being an intern, you learn a lot of things, you really look up to everyone and you gather a lot of insights and yeah, get a lot of experiences. Like good and bad ones, of course. But I remember one project very, very, very, very specifically.

This one project was an app project. So we designed an app for something technical. I don't remember exactly what it was, but I remember that we designed this app and we created our first prototype. I think it was with Sketchback then or with Photoshop. I don't remember it, but we designed the whole interface and then we created a prototype and then we tested it with users.

and got a lot of like back and forth we had a lot of like analysis before that and really synthesized like the learnings that we got also from the client and this was the first time where i felt like oh wow this is fascinating this is about the user advertisement is still super interesting but i feel like with ux all is about the user

You do testing, you iterate and this is so much about the human being that this is fascinating to me and then you have the technology. You don't need to prepare the super perfect result and then print it and then you can change it. You come up with like an 80% approach and then you iterate on that.

god I loved this approach so much it was also the first time I heard about UX because a colleague back then who's now working at Frog told me about UX this is like human computer interaction basically I never heard about that but I was fascinated and I thought this is like such a cool combination of basically science psychology but also the creativity and I thought oh wow this is like the perfect job for me this is what I was dreaming about

And I thought, okay, this is the time to, this is UX, like UX is my, this is my future, basically. This is my future job, what I want to do.

And then I got back to my university and I needed to write my, still my bachelor degree. And for me, it was, I was like, okay, now I want to be a UX designer. I want to work as a UX designer. I need to focus on that. And then I created or I wrote a master, like a bachelor thesis around a VR experience.

Back then I was already excited about the future topics. So I coded a VR experience with Unity back then. I created different prototypes. It was about like pretty difficult topics around like different donations from pharmaceutical companies to patient organizations and to doctors.

pretty difficult conversation topic but I tried to yeah visualize it in a very abstract way and like a 3d world where people could like walk through and in a vr experience I also created an app for that so very I think like super innovative project back then and super super different also to everything that was like very common at the university where I studied it

I love the process. I had a lot of fun doing that. We had some big challenges, but for me, yeah, I don't know. I really loved the time of writing my bachelor thesis. It was the best time.

And after I finished university, I had some serious issues actually finding a job. The problem was that I had basically no experience with UX. I was super passionate about it. I absolutely loved it, but I couldn't really find a job. No one really wanted me. I got a lot of rejections because I had no experience. I was motivated, but no experience.

And back then, UX was not a big thing as it is now. You could Google, but there were no UX influencers out there who you could reach out for support and ask questions. I didn't really know about bootcamps back then. So I think there were no bootcamps and no courses, basically nothing.

So what I did back then was I bought some books. I read a lot of books, theory. I pimped my portfolio. I went to hackathons. I really learned on my own. Unfortunately, I had no guidance and no one who could really help and support me. But I really pimped my portfolio. I learned a lot on my own. And I started my UX journey, actually, especially in the gap time before I got my job. And

This actually helped me. I found my first job as a junior UX designer at an agency in Berlin. And this was the starting point of my UX career, I would say. I worked there for two years. Had a really exciting time there, learned a lot of different things.

Because I was so motivated after being rejected so many times. You got your first job and then like your motivation level is on peak, right? You really want to learn everything you see. You want to try everything you do. You want to help out everywhere you can. So my motivation level was super high and I'm a super fast learner. So I learned a lot. I was very quick at understanding, at learning. And I felt after one and a half years, I felt like I reached this peak and

of not really learning more. I felt a little bit like, okay, now this is enough. And then I moved to freelance. I know this is very early, but for me, it was a good time. I felt that I, I felt very confident in my, in my skills and my abilities. So I moved to freelance and I

after that I think like one year after I also worked with pretty big clients back then I got acquired by Adobe they reached out and I worked with them for a year as a creative resident focused on the future of cities during that year was such an amazing time I'm so I'm so grateful for that time and for all the people that I met at Adobe and

So they basically supported me and other residents for a whole year where we could focus on the project. For me, it was the future cities and the future of UX. I started my podcast back then. I really, I always started to giving talks. I did workshops. I flew to the US several times, New York, San Francisco, but also India and give a workshop there. And yeah,

yeah also started my Instagram account back then I think it was like five years ago or something like that and I started my Instagram account back then and from that time on I'm still I'm still posting on social media and this year has definitely been an accelerator for me I met a lot of clients a lot of experiences really got myself out there started to build my personal brand a little bit better and I

After this year, I focused especially on the future. I got a lot of experience with different clients, especially on the future, on the future of your next year. And after that, I focused especially on like future topics. I already, back then, you know...

It was crazy when you talk about automation, automating workflows. And now this is the daily life. But I already talked about these things like five years ago. Same with AR and VR. I started to work with metaverse companies, with AI companies. So really got into it by creating a lot of personal projects. And this is also one learning that I can share with you.

Do projects on the topics that excites you. For me, it was the future. After I heard about UX, the first project that I worked in was my bachelor project, which was a VR experience. And this is not a personal project, this is a bachelor project. But still, this is something that I'm excited about. My first tip is about really follow your curiosity and build your own personal projects. Later on, clients will hire you based on those personal projects.

The second learning that I got throughout this journey is for me really giving something back before you ask for something in return. For me, after you heard that story, you know that I had a pretty tough time finding my...

my dream job basically like going from science to then graphic design and feeling like everything is not a good fit then finally finding your ex and feeling like this is my dream this is what i want to work in and then not finding a job a lot of struggles and a lot of like obstacles

And what I would have wished to have is someone also online or someone I can maybe look up to, someone who guides me a little bit, who shares their story, who I can reach out to, maybe I can book a course from and really learn from them. This is what I would have wished for. And this is what I'm trying to do now also for my community.

to share resources a lot of things are for free like this podcast like the newsletter like social media you can always reach out and write me in a message and I try to get back to every single one of you

So I try to really give back. And I think this is a super, super important thing, because now that I'm seeing like my community is so supportive, you know, when I meet people out there at conferences or just at tech events or sometimes on the street, people recognize me, come to me and talk to me, which is still unbelievable. I can't. It's still very crazy for me.

But this is the second thing, really try to give something back, not because you want to become famous or because you want something in return, but because you really want to help other people. And for me, because of my history, it felt very natural to just like give back and share your experiences and valuable resources. And my second learning on the journey now is that always invest in yourself.

We are at a time where we constantly need to learn. We need to relearn. We need to get more information. We need to get more resources. So constantly invest in yourself, constantly invest in courses, educational material, into books, into really making time to grow. This is so important and this will definitely make the difference of becoming successful or not, I feel.

If you don't read, if you don't know what's going on, if you don't, I mean, who am I saying that to, right? Like you're listening to podcasts, obviously, otherwise you wouldn't listen to this one. So you're already someone who is very keen to learn and to grow and to become a better designer, right?

But this is, I think, you can also be proud of yourself because this is a super important skill that you have that will definitely push you forward. Some people don't have that and they won't become probably pretty, really successful because other people are just like learning more and becoming better. Then you can grow very fast.

yeah those three things definitely really helped me so much on that way and now i'm at a point where i'm working with still multiple clients i am also building my courses the AI for designer course for example that is already launched for the second time i'm planning more courses this year so super exciting times if you don't want to miss that feel free to sign up to the newsletter i'm definitely notify you i also plan

I'm planning a lot of amazing things for you, so it will be super, super exciting. And yeah, I still have the podcast. I connect now. I'm focusing also on workshops and talks, keynotes for companies, for conferences and absolutely love that. And I hope that my journey is a little inspiration for you maybe to keep going.

because sometimes you feel like you're really stuck maybe at a position that you don't like maybe with co-workers you don't like maybe maybe with a profession that you don't like but there are always ways to move and to change and the more you're like the bigger your motivation the easier it is for you to reach that okay yeah that's it i hope my little personal story was helpful to you but

By the way, if you are listening to the podcast and you really like the podcast, it's helping you. I would be so happy if you could rate the podcast with a five-star review. This would help me so, so, so much to give the podcast more visibility, to record more episodes. And yeah, I really highly appreciate your support. I think such an amazing community and I really love how we support each other.

So thank you so much for listening. Let's connect on Instagram, your ex.patricia. I'm always happy to connect. And please say hello and then see you or hear you.