Episode 23: Working in UX Research in the USA with Monica Chan, EdD
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Hi everyone, I'm Dalen, founder and design educator at Curious Core. Welcome to our Working in UX Design podcast series where we interview a UX design leader in the industry on their experience in this emerging field. We've had UX professionals from Grab, AirAsia, Google and more join us previously and we're bringing you more exciting interviews this year.

Stay tuned for this week's interview with our special guest who is working in UX design. Good evening and good morning everyone. Today we are dialing in from various countries because we have a special guest who's dialing in from the East Coast in the US. Her name is Monica. My name is Dalen. I am the founder and general manager of Curious Call.

And we help make career professionals to transition into tech and we're known for doing so for the UX design discipline as well as the product management discipline.

So Monica was introduced to me by one of our instructors, and she's actually currently a UX researcher at Amazon and is based in New York at the moment. So she recently graduated from Columbia University, where she completed her doctorate in education technology.

and focus on the K-12 as well as the STEAM education, which is the science and technology education. So right now at Amazon Alexa, she investigates interactive experiences between humans and voice assistants in areas such as personalization, customization, and productivity. She has recently started mentoring on ADP lists as well as open door policy, uh,

an organization that helps refugees to find remote jobs. And she's very passionate about supporting upskilling and reskilling opportunities for career transitioners, especially in underserved populations. Monica keeps up to date with ad tech trends as well as emerging tech trends.

So today I'm going to ask her about transitioning into the UX design field, especially the UX research field, working in the US as a Singaporean, as well as her thoughts on all the new technologies

maybe including voice assistants as well as AI, right? So we're going to explore those emerging areas all in one session today. So welcome, Monica, to Working in UX Design webinar and podcast. How are you doing today? Yeah, I'm doing well. Thank you for the introduction. And yeah, thanks also for inviting me here to speak. It's awesome to see a Singaporean succeed in a large market like the US. I

I'm sure it hasn't been easy working in tech in the US. It's a much bigger market. It's so global. How has it been working in Amazon so far? I've only been at Amazon for six months, so I'm still pretty new. I think there's a lot that I'm learning. So, you know, that's always a good thing. That's what I wanted. But I think so far, you know, it's

Work has been going pretty well. I have very collaborative colleagues and the voice Lance Davis knew to me since it was quite different from what I did before. And yeah, just...

trying to always immerse myself in all these different emerging tech trends. Thank you for sharing about your work experience there. Is there anything cool that you're working on right now that you can actually share with us? Because I know you guys in Amazon work on a lot of secret projects. So is there anything that we know or we have already seen? Yeah, there are some products that are out there.

So my day-to-day, as you mentioned just now, like broadly involves like research on the human interactive experiences. Usually the mass audience, I focus on the mass audiences. So generally adults, families living in a

in a home, urban or suburban type of home that has a voice assistant. And there are many different use cases because there are just so many different types of families and so many different domains that, so domains meaning like weather, alarm, news, smart home, all these different features that you can use Alexa for. It's a pretty...

well-built-out product, but there's still a lot of improvement that Alexa can definitely be working on. I would say the organization, Alexa, is very, very...

huge at Amazon. There are so many different, you know, smaller teams. Mine is one of the teams called Alexa Identity and Personality. So we work on, you know, just Alexa having a personality, you know, what does she say back to you? What do you as a human think she would respond to you, give you suggestions, you

Try to customize your experience, learn more about you. So these are the main goals that my team has. Thank you so much. And just out of curiosity, does it include Alexa speaking with a British accent?

That is another sub team, another team. So yes, I mean, like, yeah, that is kind of under the whole like umbrella of different things that Alexa can do. I don't directly work on the British accent, but I think Alexa can do many more accents right now because they're working on localization. So yeah.

Yeah, that sounds really fun. So you went for a doctorate degree in education technology. Let's kind of like talk a little bit about your career. Like, how did you end up being at Amazon instead of like being in an education tech startup or being somewhere else? Yeah, to be honest, I applied everywhere. I applied to industry positions in big tech, ed tech,

some startups also related to ed tech so a whole range when I was just about to graduate so that was earlier this year and I also applied to academic positions but that is a whole other story yeah and just weighed all my options on you know what would give me

I think there were kind of three main areas that I was looking for in my next role. So having a good career development pathway, like a structured pathway, that was the first. The second was mentorship because I knew I was coming in, probably going to come into a new area if, you know, if I'm going to do UX research. I'll be fairly new. I mean, there are some transferable skills from my doctoral program, but the content area might also be new. So I was looking for very strong mentorship.

from my colleagues, from my manager. And then the third area was work-life balance. So having flexibility in my role, I was looking for either remote or hybrid. I didn't want to be five days a week in the office. So yeah, these are the three main areas that I was looking for. And I think when I interviewed with my team at Amazon, I felt they really fitted these three things that I wanted. Yeah.

Yeah, so I ended up choosing Amazon and the UX research path. Well, I'm really glad that you managed to find all three things in the job that you won. And I wouldn't say everyone is so lucky. In fact, maybe tell us a little bit more about working in UX research. What are the profiles of some of your colleagues? Do they all have PhDs or what exactly is going on?

Oh, it's very different, very diverse. So I have one colleague, she comes more from an MBA business background and

And she was doing more of consumer insights, consumer research over the past few years. And then now she has moved into user research and she manages like our voice of customer program. So, you know, getting feedback and reviews, scrolling, like kind of trawling through all the social media platforms where people post about themselves.

like just reviews about, you know, Alexa features like that. So that's also very important. And yeah, I work very closely with her. I have another colleague who is a career transitioner. So she started off her career in merchandising and more branding, marketing, and she's

She's a UX research apprentice now in Amazon. So Amazon has this one-year program for career transitioners in the U.S. Her background is also very different from mine. And I also have a few other research colleagues who came from psychology, anthropology backgrounds. Some are more from computer science, human-computer interaction.

Yeah, there was one who did fashion in the past and was on the design route, but then through design found UX research and now is doing more research. So yeah, honestly, it's very just a big mix

There are, of course, people who have done PhDs also in different areas. I'm really glad to hear how diverse the team is and how open Amazon is to hiring career transitions because that's also what we're about, helping mid-career professionals to get into tech. I was just wondering, in your opinion, what makes a good UX researcher? Why do you think...

the people ended up being at Amazon, right? And you're a foreigner yourself, right? So they actually had to make special effort to actually get you in. So I'm just wondering, what do you think are the qualities or skills that UX researchers should have if they want to work in a company like Amazon?

So I like to just, you know, always split it out into the, just the job title itself, right? User and researcher. So I think user is of course, you know, the highlight. It's very important. A good UX researcher is someone who is always curious, wants to dive deeper into the user.

ask good questions, not basic ones about like, you know, who is the user, but really like, why is the using doing what they are doing? Like, why do they have this workflow? How is it different from what maybe stakeholders internally think about the user and, you know, demystifying all these different facets of the user, because the user is usually multidimensional. It's not just like a one kind of perspective that you get just being curious about the user and,

And always having the users top of mind in whatever conversations with stakeholders, any other type of research you might do.

And then, of course, the second part of that job title is researcher. So being, of course, strong in research, employing a variety of research skills. So it could be qualitative. It could be mixed methods. It could be quantitative. You don't have to be skilled in every single method out there because there are just so many research methods. Some people lean qualitative. Some people lean quantitative. But...

really knowing when to use the right methodology is important. So that would entail knowing the scope well, getting enough context from stakeholders, crafting those research questions well so that it guides you into using the right method and the right data analysis method. So I think these two main things

areas the curiosity about the user and also having that tool research toolkit like you know you can pull out a couple of methods anytime you have a good reason to on why to use those methods

Yeah, I think that's very wise advice and it sounds a little bit like there's a soft skill side or rather there's a trait and there's like an actual technical skill to it. And was it a deliberate move for you to actually study in the US so that you could work in the US?

Not really, honestly. I think so. So I moved to the US because of undergrad. So I did my undergrad in California at Stanford University. That was more me at 18 years old. I just want to explore more things. You know, I was like, ah, Singapore is small. I just want to go somewhere else. So yeah, that was me as a naive 18 year old. And then, you know, California, I was looking on Google Maps. Oh, it looks so fun. Looks so beautiful. I want to go there.

Okay, so it wasn't like a deliberate kind of career strategy where, okay, I'm going to study a PhD and then I'm going to end up working for a big tech firm in the US. No, not like that. I think I just went wherever my heart wanted to go. I was actually very open to opportunities around the world. I applied to both US and other places around the world and also in Southeast Asia. And thanks for being honest and open about it.

it and I was just wondering for Singaporeans or even people from outside of the US who actually want to work in the US you know like is there anything that they should do or that they should try to do in their CV or in their profile in order to strengthen their profile so that they can get into tech industry in the US specifically do you mean people who don't want to do a university program in the US but just want to move for a job

Is that right? Let's say they want to skip the whole university route, whether it's a master degree or whether it's a PhD like yourself, but they really are interested to work in the US. Is there anything that they can do to strengthen their application?

So I think there are two ways that I've seen most common. So one way is joining a large enough, like a large company that has US positions. And, you know, you may join it from a non-US location, but then get posted to the US. So I would do like an internal transition, maybe it's a team transition, or your team itself has US positions, and then you kind of transition there.

when you're in the company. And I've seen multiple people do that actually at Amazon. They started in a non-US location. So either

or even the UK, Europe, I think a couple of Southeast Asian countries also, and then they transfer to a US location. So I think that's one route. Another route is definitely just applying directly to US positions. I've also had a couple of friends do that. I think in terms of competition, like, yes, it's always competitive as an international applicant. Just highlighting all your experiences so far is awesome.

honestly, the main thing. But I think networking plays a very big role. So networking like on LinkedIn, getting to know recruiters and hiring managers in the US. So some roles are open to hiring from abroad. And they don't care too much about where you're coming from. It's really they care about the skills and the diversity that you can bring to their team. So yeah, I actually think

I mean, networking takes time. It isn't like you can do it in one week and then suddenly you get a job. It may take a few months. Yeah, just keeping in touch with people from these target companies. Some people also change companies, like different hiring managers or recruiters go to different companies. So, you know, making sure you kind of just stay in touch with them. Maybe someone may reach out to you for an opportunity if you stay in touch with them. Or if you see LinkedIn updates from them, then you can just

reach out to them. Yeah, I think there's no shame in doing that. I think that's really, really brilliant advice. And I also noticed that you have some additional languages that's not just our standard English or Mandarin here in Singapore. You actually speak French and German. Did you think that played a part in your application?

Not too much in the US because everyone speaks English and that was just me. I was learning more languages when I was younger. But yeah, I don't think additional languages is too helpful, but yeah.

There are some roles, I mean, if they are focusing, if it's UX research on like, say, international expansion or UX research in a certain community that may be more Spanish speaking or Asian language speaking, like Chinese or Vietnamese, then, you know, the job description will write a certain language requirement or preferred language requirement.

climate. So yeah, but for the roles that I applied to, it was mostly English. I wanted to ask you, you mentioned you've been in Stanford before. So you've kind of like seen how's it like in the tech industry in Silicon Valley, in California, and now you're working in New York, which is the East Coast, right? So just want to get your sense, like, you know, East Coast versus West Coast tech scene, what do you prefer? And what's more, like, what's your sense? Yeah.

It's really hard to say. I don't think I have one or the other that I prefer entirely. So in California, the tech scene is definitely a lot stronger. You definitely see it everywhere you go because they are like...

big, big campuses like, you know, Google and Meta have their huge campuses in the South Bay area. But in New York, it's kind of like scattered all around the city. Like there are buildings, there are certain offices, but New York is a lot more diverse. There are so many other types of industries, like, I mean, finance or trading. And it's a huge one because Wall Street's there and like business consulting and all that. So, yeah, I mean, in the Bay area, it's definitely big,

Big tech plus a lot of startups, VCs. Yeah, I don't have one that I prefer over the other. I just now have many friends in both areas. So...

I think that's always nice to know some people when I go back to California. Exactly as you said, like networking is super important, especially when it comes to trying to find a new role and making a career transition. It's always good to have friends in the tech industry who can help you with that. I was just wondering, I read a lot about Amazon, right? Including its culture, including its founder as well.

And I was just wondering how much of that is actually sort of like translated within your team. For example, I read that before you go into every meeting, you're supposed to like prepare some like notes or something like in a very concise manner.

That's kind of like part of the Amazon culture. And there's a lot of talk about working backwards in Amazon. So how much of that is actually like in the team that builds its product? Yeah. So in terms of notes, I think you mean, do you mean by more like a documentation report writing sort of culture, like writing stuff? Yeah, like writing stuff in a very super concise manner before you, you

You even ask people to go into meetings. So that happens sometimes, I would say. So as a UX researcher, how I socialize my research, doing research shareouts, Amazon's definitely a more writing-heavy, sort of has a more writing-heavy culture than a few other tech firms. So I would prepare my report. It's usually not that long, the main body of the report.

But, you know, it has an executive summary. It has the main insights, my main recommendations right at the top. And then, you know, all my detailed findings at the bottom and sometimes appendices. So, yes, I do send this link in advance or at the start of the call to all my stakeholders and people who are attending my share out. And then I would give them about 15 minutes.

15, 20 minutes to read it through, comment directly on the document. So yeah, that is a part of the culture that we want things written out, we want things black and white before we start discussing. And then only after 20 minutes, okay, then we do Q&A. So it's kind of a given that people will read your document during that time that you set up.

rather than going straight into a presentation using slides, which I've done a lot more in other companies. Yeah, I mean, that was something I had to get used to a bit more. But you know, after writing a whole PhD dissertation, like writing a few pages is all right for me. Yeah, I think for some people who did had not written a lot before, you know, writing five to six pages is a bit of a challenge. Or like writing concisely, sometimes it's a challenge also. But

We have a lot of writing workshops. There are also writing consultants you can engage to help you in your writing. So I think that's part of professional development and professional learning. So I do think that's a really great resource. So that's one. But it's not every meeting that's like that. It's only if there's really a document to be discussed, then we have some reading time. If it's more of like a one-on-one chat, then having a gender is always good.

Yeah, before you go on to the next point,

Writing is such an underappreciated meta skill, right? It's useful in every job, right? Because we need to write, we need to communicate, and people who write well actually get noticed a lot more. So you were saying in terms of culture, is there other unique bits and pieces of Amazon's culture that you appreciate? The leadership principles at Amazon are very strong. Like,

If you just search Amazon Leadership Principles on Google, you can see a whole list of them. I'll also add the link in this chat. Yeah, so...

like right at the top you see customer obsessions. So I think that is one major principle that kind of runs through the veins of all the organizations at Amazon and definitely is very apparent in my, under Alexa and in my team. I mean, of course we are UX researchers and UX designers, but, and of course the customer users always first, but

You know, having this as a leadership principle means that every stakeholder is always thinking about the customer. And I guess the working backwards is where we are at, but then also working backwards to all the way back to the customer, like their needs, their preferences, their mental models. So yeah, we are definitely always like that is definitely a big leadership principle.

There are many others down there like learn and be curious, bias for action, earning trust, you know, respecting others at work and all that. So I think those are really strong leadership principles. I would say at the Amazon interview process, there is a whole range.

section or like whenever you discuss about your past projects like interviewers are also wanting to see how you weave these leadership principles into your answers yeah as a newly mentioned interviewer I just you know did a whole like

course so I can now start interviewing new graduates and interns yeah I've read so much about Amazon and it's really nice to hear that you're living and you're breathing it especially in the US side because we do also interview

interact with some of your colleagues here in the Asia Pacific region. So it's really nice to see that translating, especially in UX research. And I noticed you work in Pinterest as well. How does Amazon design team or research team differ from like Pinterest research team?

It's quite different, actually. So Pinterest is a big company, but it's still not as big as Amazon. So Amazon is huge. So at Pinterest, I knew everyone on the research team. There were 20 something of us when I was there. Maybe they have expanded a bit more now. But, you know, 20 something is a good number to really get to know everyone. I knew everyone's projects, skills, like everything.

I knew like, oh, this person is definitely the quant person to get all my answers about survey analysis answered. I knew who to go to quickly. At Amazon, it's like, I mean, there are hundreds of researchers. I would not know everyone. We sometimes have like these monthly surveys.

Alexa user researchers syncs to learn about each other's projects. But I mean, also not everyone attends it. So, you know, sometimes it's difficult to really get to know, like, how does this other person on another Alexa team, like, how does their research intersect with mine? Sometimes it's a bit more of like, you really have to reach out to someone or we just ask the whole group, like, hey, has anyone done research in this area or is about to? And

potential collaboration opportunities in that sense. So the first factor is really the size and the scale. Pinterest, so I would say my work at Pinterest at least, I interacted very closely with the data scientists and the designer. And I had like one data scientist and one designer and one PM stakeholder because I was in an embedded team

But now at Amazon and Alexa, I have multiple, a few different designers. Every little feature of Alexa has a PM on it. And yeah, easily I'm like talking to five or six product managers. There are also many other roles like that's marketing, that is business development, program managers. So a lot more stakeholders involved.

I mean, it's related to the size of the company or like the size of the teams. But I think Pinterest was felt a lot more tight knit in the sense that I only had these like main few stakeholders that I'm always interacting with versus like an Amazon or an Alexa of like

all these like, you know, in the two digit figure. Yeah. I think that kind of makes sense why Amazon emphasizes so much on good writing, right? Yeah. Yeah. Transferring information, communication. It becomes really tough. And if you don't write well, it becomes really tough to communicate and it becomes really difficult to track and understand

when there's a lot of movement between people as well, when people go away and things like that. So that idea of documentation and the idea of writing in a very concise manner certainly really helps, especially in a much larger organization. So I can certainly appreciate that.

Let's talk about technology. I mean, we've been talking about how to get into the industry and make a career transition. So I know you did some research on education technology. Do you want to share like what did you write about in your thesis for your PhD? My thesis focused on maker education. So K-12 STEM, STEAM education and maker education is the interdisciplinary things of project-based learning that you do in a makerspace.

And I specifically focused on formative assessments for maker education. So yeah, that was my, I guess, my title in my dissertation. Yeah, so I think that's really great. And thanks for sharing that in terms of like education specific. Do you actually get to apply what you learned or what you did?

My work today as a UX researcher in Alexa is not focused on education very much. So the content is very different. But I would say the skills, like the research skills are definitely very transferable. So I leaned qualitative in my dissertation. I was doing a lot of interviews with students and teachers.

observations also yeah so these were like these two main methods were my bread and butter and I mean today at Amazon and also at Pinterest you know I have been definitely using these skills my research has also leaned qualitative but just exploring new software is to do it also so let's talk a little bit more about Alexa right Alexa is is voice enabled technology and

And there was a period of time where everyone felt like this was like the next big thing. We were gonna interact with our devices using voice.

a lot and there was, you know, there was excitement surrounding Siri, there was excitement surrounding Alexa and conversational UI, UX as well. So I was just wondering, like, what are some of the important things user experience professionals should know about doing work within the voice-enabled technology field?

I think that's a very good question. I know there was a hype for it kind of like went up hype and then now it's kind of like plateaued a bit. But I think there's still...

a lot that can be explored in voice and mostly in the different types of use cases. I know Alexa is more of like at home, but I recently went to a voice conference and there were companies, you know, doing voice enabled functions for like call centers or sometimes voice is also a chatbot like conversation design, trying to make

voice assistants human in that sense or more human in the way that they respond. I think there's still like, I don't feel like culturally sensitive. Inclusivity is a big topic now in voice. I think we mentioned just now about localization, pronouncing your name right. Like you would hope Alexa can do that. But there are many different kinds of names in the world. And, you know, I think like we are at a stage where, you know, there has been progress made, but there's also still a lot

more to go. I'm sure there is and I think that is that's what makes technology so exciting because like even though you may have worked one or two decades in technology there are there's always something exciting about it like even now for example like the the most

Recent thing is AI, right? Like people are paying a lot of attention to AI, whether it's mid-journey where you simulate artwork through AI or whether it's chat and GBT where you ask a question and there's a lot of conversation. Have you been playing with chat GBT by any chance? A little. Yeah, I actually had a friend who asked chat GBT about her own dissertation and she was like, wow, chat GBT gave me a better summary than my abstract. Yeah.

So yeah, we're like, "Ooh, okay." I think we're in this kind of very exciting period, right? Where it's for AI especially, that's where people are starting to realize, "Oh my God, my job is going to be replaced by AI potentially within my lifetime." As I was just having a conversation with others. What do you think is next for voice? Because we talk about it being trending and then after that, it dying down a little in terms of the interest.

What do you think voice tech means in order to gather as much interest as AI? I think voice being more inclusive over time is definitely... I think that's what a lot of people are talking about at the moment. So say voice technology for kids because I mean right now I think most voice assistants can recognize adult voices a lot better just because they've been trained more on adult voices.

But I mean, if you see kids nowadays, they've been born into the era of voice. So when they see a device thing, I think it can talk. Like I've seen some kids who just talk to like something that looks like an Alexa, but it's not an Alexa. And then it doesn't respond. And they're like, okay.

Yeah. Or a kid asks for something, but then Alexa or a voice assistant comes back with such a long answer that it kind of goes over their head. They're just like, I just wanted to ask, maybe like, why is the sky blue kind of question? And Alexa gives like a whole paragraph. So that's too much. So, you know, how might a voice assistant change in the way it responds to a person like a child or...

As a human, you might respond differently when a six-year-old child asks you a question. So how can the voice assistant do the same? I think there is also a lot more discussion in accessibility. And for people who have disabled or have certain handicaps, how might voice be able to optimize their lives? There are a lot of new Alexa skills around that also. So I'm very new to the area of accessibility, but...

it kind of popped into my mind because, yeah, I've been joining these like monthly research and accessibility chats and Amazon and it has really opened my mind to, you know, very...

new use cases that I didn't even think about or wasn't even familiar with. So yeah, I think it's always good as a UX researcher to kind of expand your horizons to just know a little more. You know, I don't do accessibility research exactly right now, but I think it's always good to have these other, I wouldn't call them edge cases, but not as common use cases to ensure that the product is

being inclusive overall. I think when you're developing for voice and there are developments in other areas of technology as well, like AI, there's also areas whereby they intersect, right? So as AI gets stronger, as the models are actually conversational models are getting better, like for chat GPT, for example, it could also bring about new possibilities in

in voice enabled technology, which means right now you could potentially, if they make API more open and accessible, right? It could potentially mean a kid could just ask questions to Alexa and part of the answers could be retrieved by open AI. And that could really create some very interesting scenarios.

It could, yeah. I'm not sure how that's going to go down or how that will change also how teachers and students interact. How are the teachers going to set these homework assignments, maybe? How are they going to... I think such technologies, it's kind of bound to happen. So I think, you know, I would say not being afraid of it and not kind of shielding children away from it, but they're going to

they're going to find it out for themselves. So yeah, but more of like incorporating that, how do we incorporate that into lessons? I mean, the human teacher is still a very much needed role. So it's definitely not replacing a human teacher, but how can a human teacher leverage and optimize that? I think that's kind of the next step we need to think about. So you mentioned a couple of things about voice technology that seems to be trending. What are you personally most excited by?

So mine is a lot more related to interactivity. So like, you know, does the customer expect a certain thing when they said this about the

product. And in turn, like, you know, Alexa suggesting it, I'm also looking into like customers mental models, like, do they perceive an Alexa, you know, suggestion as an ad? Or is it Alexa trying to converse with you like a real human, like suggesting something, a recommendation. So I think that is a, it's kind of a fine line, because sometimes,

it kind of really sounds like an ad, but on our end as in Amazon and Alexa for the developers, that was not considered an ad. So, you know, and of course over time we wouldn't want all the customers to like think that

Alexa's just sending me ads all the time. Yeah, to what extent is it branded as like marketing content? That's a really interesting area that you're talking about because I think it's got so much to do with trust, right? Like how much do we trust our devices? Yeah, I think it's customers' trust, customers' knowledge about Alexa also. Like do some people perceive her as like, oh, is she really learning more about me and can she like personalize my experience or is she just taking my data? Yeah.

And like, yeah, sending me more ads. I think like diving deeper into these like questions. Yeah, I think that's a lot of interesting use cases. And I would maybe metaphorically point out the fact that maybe Alexa could be like a good waiter, right?

in your favorite restaurant and over time as you go to the restaurant a lot more your favorite waiter is going to recommend you better things and be able to interact you with you in a more friendly manner so kind of like you can say it's a waiter or a butler your personal butler even i think that when you talk about the area of proactivity i think that that was um

interesting to me because I used to do waitering when I was schooling and I was watching people. Oh, is this person thirsty? Do they need water to fill up? Oh, it seems like they're missing cutlery, right? Let me go get cutlery. So I think it's that kind of sensing and using all that information and doing things without being prompted to do it. I don't know. Do people feel scared when a machine does that? Yeah.

Yeah, I mean, that's also like, you know, one area that definitely we can do more research into it. Not just feeling scared, but either alienated or like maybe they got this product thinking that they will do X with it, but then they started doing Y, but then maybe they go back to X. Oh, it's not working as well as expected. So I think like just these like lapses also, you know, I mean, as a human or as a human, you change, your preferences also change and

you're organic. So, you know, how can Alexa go along with you in this experience?

So just going to like try and wrap up in the next couple of minutes. I was just wondering, do you have any advice for people who are trying to break into the UX design industry? I see that you're mentoring for ADP List as well as you're helping Open Door Policy, which is helping refugees to get jobs in tech. So I was just wondering, like you've seen a lot of profiles, you've seen a lot of CVs and people. What are some of your key things

advice that you would impart to people who want to break into tech? UX is very diverse. People come from many, many different types of backgrounds. So definitely, I think the first thing that wins half the race is being confident. Confident in your interviews, confident in your portfolio presentations.

People are going to ask you about, oh, why this research method? What could you have done better? What was the conflict? These are very common interview questions. And just answer them confidently because there is no one right answer, by the way. There's no like...

answer on a research method also. But there is a right, like, I guess, way that you can answer it in the sense that it makes sense to the project. Because it's always going back to the context, going back to the research questions. And then that method or that way of data analysis or that method of communication was the best fit for this context. So, yeah, I think, number one, being confident. Yeah.

I think number two, I mean, if you're very new to the field and you don't have a lot of projects under your belt, definitely go out there, do some side projects.

Any kind of project experience where you're also interacting with a couple of different stakeholders is helpful. I would say, I mean, reflecting on my Amazon interview, 90% of my final round was collaboration-based communication and collaboration-based questions. So I was like actually very...

shocked, surprised because I thought, you know, I was going to be asked more about research, but it seemed that my team at least really focused on that communication aspect with stakeholders. So don't only focus on like the nitty gritty, like the hard skills, core skills. That's important, definitely. But really the soft skills is also don't sleep on it. Yeah. And then, yeah, my third one is just

I think I mentioned just now already, just keep on networking, building your network. You never know when someone suddenly thinks of you like, like, Hey, Atika who recommended me for this, like, you know, I met her a while back in Singapore and yeah, I haven't been in contact with her for a bunch, like a few months. And yeah. And suddenly she reached out and I was like, Oh, hi, thanks for thinking about me. So yeah, I mean, it's always nice to like check in with people and it's

Sometimes just having informational coffee chats, you can get a lot out of half an hour. That's great. I think all of it is very, very good advice. And it seems a lot more like the soft skills are just as important as the hard skills. And don't just learn the soft skills, but apply the soft skills, right? Yeah.

Oh yeah, and I think one more, if you're transitioning careers, your last job can actually also be very helpful. It may not, I mean, your title may not have been UX designer or UX researcher, but you might have a lot of transferable skills.

So definitely don't completely leave that out of your resume or be ashamed to talk about that. Not at all. I think the UX field definitely highlights diversity. So I think I mentioned just now how diverse all the backgrounds of UX designers and researchers are on my team. Highlight those transferable skills. Make sure you're checking with the job description that you're applying for. Have some similar keywords identified.

Of course, don't copy the job description, but make sure you have like those keywords. You're speaking the same language. I think for me, when I was transitioning from academia, that, you know, cross-functional stakeholders wasn't as much of a term that I used in academia. But I was working with like teachers, administrators, government people, students of like different diverse backgrounds. Like these were all my like diverse backgrounds.

stakeholders that I was working with and I was really able to highlight that in the interviews also. That's my final one. I think all of that is really, really good advice. And just wondering if you were to look back

what you have done trying to break into the industry like in the past right whether it was like you being a fresh graduate or you trying to kind of get into the tech industry again after your PhD was there anything you wish you had done differently or done better I think

I think knowing that maybe that was like during more in my like schooling days. So I was doing projects and courses and all that. I think I definitely worked on the hard skills a lot more. Like, yeah, so definitely that goes back to my comment just now about

really engaging those soft skills and highlighting, like not just stating that you have collaborative skills, like that doesn't really mean so much, but showing in your bullet point how you have collaborated, I think it's a lot more impactful. So don't just say like, oh, my skills, collaboration, communication, like that bullet point doesn't mean as much. Yeah, I think going back, like...

I mean, if I had known I would go into UX research, maybe getting a bit more like internship experience. I did a couple of contracts, but you know, you can always do more. Like the project experience is very important in building on your portfolio. I think that's just a couple of things I would have done a bit better. Thank you so much, Monica, for being such a wonderful guest and imparting

your wisdom and your experience. And thanks for taking time to do this early in the morning in New York. I wish you a happy holidays in New York City. I heard Christmas is great there. And at the same time, I just wanted to maybe put it out there. I was wondering if you'll be open to connecting with the audiences, what's the best way for them to reach out to you?

Yeah, definitely. I'm open to connecting on LinkedIn, Twitter, ADP List. I think, by the way, ADP List is such a great platform. There's so many mentors who, you know, just they mentor for free, by the way, and they're very willing to chat. I mean, they are placing their open times and some of

the people I've met are very experienced. So I just recently became a mentor, happy to chat with you there. Oh yeah, I wish I'd done a bit more like mock interviews with mentors because I only found out about ADP List after I started at Amazon. So that's kind of what I've been telling all my friends, like do mock interviews, like mock portfolio presentations, because this is what you're doing it with someone who is a lot more experienced. They're also someone you don't

no so it's like different from doing a mock interview with a friend yeah so getting that feedback is really good for those of you who like to connect with monica feel free to connect with her over linkedin as well as adb list and i'm so glad you mentioned about actually doing mock interviews with actual practitioners because that's like super important and we actually designed that within our program itself where we actually help make career professionals

while transitioning on a part-time basis.

So overall, thank you so much for your time and let's keep in touch and I'll reach out to you with the screenshots and the recording later as a follow up. And for those of you who are listening to this for the very first time, please feel free to check out our podcast, Working in UX Design, as well as our webinar sessions on our YouTube. So do like and subscribe to our podcast and webinar session. Thank you so much for joining us this evening.

And I will close the room briefly because we're going to conduct a lesson very soon. All right, take care. I hope you enjoyed this episode. If you did, please let me know what you think. Get in touch with me over email at mail at curiouscore.com. I would love to hear from you

Do also check out our previous interviews and other free resources at curiouscore.com. And until next time, I'll see you on the next episode. Take care and keep leaning into change.