Julio is a Product Designer. In this interview with Julio we are going to discuss how he got started in UX and where he gets his inspiration.
His fundamental passion is designing user-friendly, polished digital products. He has worked full time and as a consultant for reputable companies from large corporates to startups including Funding, Tabcorp, Sydney Water, The Sun, Spaceship, Woolworths, Merivale, Lifestyle Channel and more. He has taught UX design at Academy Xi, mentored designers, authored design articles and spoken at design events.
How did you get started in design industry? How did you get to where you are today?
I began my design career studying Events Design & Management at Ultimo Tafe, this course covered events planning, marketing, graphic design, budgeting, & stakeholder management. After I graduated I started a niche creative events and design company called El Camino. This was successful and I had multiple art and live music events running simultaneously at well known venues in Sydney for Merivale and The Keystone group. I was doing the graphic and website design for these events and I enjoyed it so I decided to go and study design at Enmore Design Centre, I could still run my events on weekends and in the evenings. I took the Graphic Design diploma which covered interface design, user experience design, web development, typography, motion design, illustration and art direction, it really covered everything in the digital design spectrum.
During the course I started to design and build WordPress websites and apps for freelance clients using the skills I was learning, at this point I decided I wanted to specialise in UX & UI design instead of print or web development.
After graduating I continued working on websites and apps for freelance clients and after a year or so I decided to dig deeper into UX design, after researching, I found the first UX course offered in Australia, it was at General Assembly in Sydney. I took the course which was 10 weeks of intensive workshops and study and this helped me solidify my previous experience. Shortly after finishing this course I got a full time UX designer role at Tabcorp, I kept on doing freelance design work and events on the side.
What transferrable skills have you learned in other jobs that have helped your career in design? How do you apply them?
The skills I learnt in Events Design were very helpful when I started in UX, I found the planning and management experience was great for organising UX research activities like interviews and usability testing, it also helped with being able to talk to project stakeholders. The Graphic Design skills I learnt also came in very handy, design principles like symmetry, hierarchy, colour theory and balance flow across into UI design and the tools are similar, I could easily use Sketch instead of Photoshop and Illustrator. The web development knowledge of html, css and javascript was useful to speak to the developers.
What work/project are you most proud of?
I am particularly proud of the new Spaceship Voyager App I designed along with my team in early 2019. The mission of helping people save and care about a financially secure future really resonated well with me. The team and I did a full app redesign following a human centred design process, we gave customers what they actually wanted. The app has been successful with over 60,000 active users and more signing everyday, it makes me happy that we could create such a positive and useful app.
Was there a time when you have messed up and felt like you have failed? What did you do? How did you deal with it?
When you are in the early research and testing phase of a UX design project you are constantly failing and improving your designs based on those failings. I have never seen someone design the perfect app the first time around. As far as big projects failing I did work on one that ended up not getting the market traction and customer base it needed and therefore ended up shutting down. We followed a solid research and design process, but sometimes that isn’t enough to make it successful, I did feel a bit bad about it but looking back I think it wasn’t a great strategic move from the company to enter the business space that it went into.
What advice would you give to those just starting in the industry?
When you are starting out in UX/UI design you need to learn a lot of new things and go through a mind state change, you will need to accept that you are new to the industry and keep a learners mindset, try and absorb information and ask lots of questions and remember it is ok not to know everything, asking questions is how you learn. Immersing yourself in the industry also helps, try and go to events like design meetups and talks and network with people, go and introduce yourself and have a chat you never know, you may meet a potential employer. It is important to read books, watch design documentaries, and do tutorials to keep on learning, there is so many parts of digital design that are constantly changing so constant upskilling and learning is part of this job.
Who are your mentors?
I have had the luck to work with some great designers over my career, they have taught me so much about design and research, I made sure I asked them lots of questions and pushed myself to learn from them, sometimes if you don’t ask you won’t receive. I find that you can learn a lot from the designers you work with, everyone has their own way of doing things and you may notice something that you can pick up from someone else this is regardless of seniority or experience.
I have never had an official mentor outside of work but I am friends with other designers who I speak to about design and we share our thoughts and learnings so this is a kind of shared mentor experience I suppose. I mentor students for Academy Xi part time which I really enjoy doing and find rewarding, it is great to teach people and help them to make a career change or pivot from their current roles.
Where do you find inspiration?
I find design inspiration in many forms, from reading design articles to looking at architecture and even watching films, there are always forms and patterns that can be used and translated into digital design. When I am looking at solving a specific business problem I generally look at other popular apps to see how they solve things, I always push myself to consider if a similar solution could work for what I am designing right now, sometimes a great solution can already be on your phone you just need to find it.
For new ideas and visuals Dribbble is my go to website and app, there are amazing designers coming up with new trends and patterns that I don’t really see anywhere else, sometimes the ideas are unrealistic to develop and the user experience is not the best, so you do need to consider that if you are taking inspiration from Dribbble always user test them to make sure it works for the business and the users.
Do you have a “productivity hack”?
Write down everything you need to do in a notebook or task app in order of importance at the beginning of every day, focus on one task at a time and push yourself to tick as many off the list as you can in between your meetings. The tasks that don’t get completed go to the top of the next days list. I also love using noise cancelling headphones and playing relaxing music when I need to focus without distractions. Another hack is to not continuously check Slack and emails, it can really wreck your focus, try and set times when you check them which is convenient for you and not other people. Also, with meetings see if you can solve the problem with an email or slack conversation, meetings are a big killer of time and productivity and some of them just do not really need to be had in the first place.
What tools do you use on a regular basis?
Design:
Figma & Sketch
Research:
Miro, Fullstory, Optimal Workshop, Loom & Google Suite
Prototyping:
InVision, Principal & Protopie
What books/websites/podcasts would you recommend?
Books:
- Sprint by Jake Knapp
- Hooked by Nir Eyal
- Thinking Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman
- The Design of Everyday Things by Don Norman
- Flow by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
Websites:
Podcasts:
