Meet Juliana Wang: From freelance illustrator to UX/UI designer

4 weeks ago

London, United Kingdom Microcred Full time

Meet Juliana Wang: From freelance illustrator to UX/UI designer
After completing studies in graphic design and fine art, Juliana Wang was a freelance illustrator for many years, contributing to editorial publications for international clients including national newspapers and consumer magazines. At weekends, Juliana was also an art tutor, leading weekly sessions teaching art and drawing to young students in conjunction with her freelance work.
Hoping to work in a more fast-paced, challenging environment where she could have more stability and focus on ‘design for good’, she made the move from illustrator to graphic designer. This was her first step towards changing careers to become a UX/UI designer.
In this interview, Juliana tells us about her upskilling journey of studying and combining courses during evenings and weekends with full-time work. In addition, she encourages everyone to take advantage of the many free events and classes available which can also help you in your career.
Graphic designer and, before that, freelance illustrator
I decided to move from illustration into graphic design for the financial stability. I was looking to take on a full-time position temporarily and had planned to move back to part time to continue my illustration. At the same time, I still had opportunities to create illustrations for designs when appropriate for the audience, tone and message. The break from illustration also gave me a fresh perspective on my work and helped me to develop my illustrations further as I became more influenced by the language of design.
I moved onto a UI design role in summer 2018 and moved to my current position, where the role is split between UX and UI, last August, 2019.
I wanted to work in a more challenging environment, which would help me to professionally develop myself. I was interested in learning how other teams work in a more agile way, and I had a nagging sense of wanting to understand the impact my designs have on the end-user.
I knew I wanted to develop my UI design experience further and delve deeper into the processes of user research and testing to validate problems and ideas. I was curious about the transition from web to product design. When I started looking at jobs it became more and more apparent that I wanted to design for good. My lack of experience in UX design meant I ended up spending a lot of my time in the evenings and weekends learning about design to fill in those knowledge gaps. I toiled away on my website during all my spare hours for a few months. But I learnt a lot through the process too, and it’s helped me get to where I am today.
What training and support did you receive?
I’ve taken a few courses on Interaction Design Foundation to build up my UX skills and regularly read a lot on and offline — I’ve found the blogs by IDEO and Nielsen Norman Group (NN/g) particularly helpful and would recommend Lean UX by Jeff Gothelf and Josh Seiden, The Smarter Screen by Schlomo Benartzi and What Works: Gender Equality by Design by Iris Bohnet. I’ve attended a few NN/g training conferences and I went to Design Systems London last year — NN/g is always great for packing a lot of helpful and practical content in a short space of time.
I also have two wonderful brothers and a very supportive partner who were always on hand to look at my portfolio with a critical eye and helped me improve my CV and cover letter. The pace is challenging and at times overwhelming, but I work in an incredible team backed by a positive company culture that is very supportive of wellbeing. I worked more autonomously in my previous roles and was very independent as a freelance illustrator. Since joining them I’ve become a lot more aware of the inequalities in hiring that hurt diversity. Design is still a big chunk of what I do, I juggle that with organising and running user research and testing. In both roles as a graphic designer and UX/UI designer, I have to be a good listener and drill down to the core goals for the client or business — there’s just a lot more emphasis on making sure we meet user needs now too.
Developing my experience in UX and UI design, helping shape the brand identity through UI design, learning more about animation to bring joy and delight into the experience of using our product.
Accept that you may have to make some compromises to successfully change track and be in a happier place long term — you might need to sacrifice socialising to devote more hours to upskilling, especially if it’s hard to do so in your day-to-day job.
Or perhaps (finances permitting) you’ll need to invest in resources to gain that knowledge — whether through books, online training etc, but it’ll be the building blocks of knowledge and confidence you’ll gain in a new area, which in itself is pretty exciting too.
Check out free/low-cost events like Meet Up groups to learn how other people work in the field you’re interested in. For free career guidance resources, tools for finding more rewarding work, and courses in our Learning Hub, register with Stay Nimble .
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