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“You spent seven years learning finance, a Fortune Global 500 company finally accepted you, and you’re not going to pursue that? Are you insane? “
This is what some of Volodymyr’s friends used to say to him a couple of years back. Like any person transitioning to a different job and following their passion, he had his fair share of disapproval, but also people who had his back. No matter which voices were louder, he was more determined than ever to pursue Design and never looked back.
I am kicking off this series with one of Mento’s first students, Volodymyr, now a successful Product Designer and one of the most fun and caring people I’ve worked with. Similar to myself, Mento changed Volodymyr’s career at a time when he decided UX Design was his calling. After spending a couple of years trying to find his way in other industries, including Finance, Software development, and other creative activities such as photography or music, UX made him fall in love, and he never looked back.
I am originally from Ukraine but moved to Poland a couple of years ago. I’ve studied finance, even though I’ve already been a person passionate about creativity and sports. I love any sport involving a ball, apart from football, where an injury ended my professional tennis career. :)
I like discovering new places, tasting local food, and sharing these experiences with others is something that excites me the most. On the creative side, I love animation and motion. I am interested in how UX Design combined with motion graphics can make the user experience not only better and more efficient but more delightful as well. I hope to be able to master those one day.
As many of you would guess, this shift in perception and priorities happened during the pandemic. I realized I didn’t enjoy what I was doing, my work never challenged my creativity, and days seemed to fly by doing repetitive tasks.
You could name any activity anyone has done during the pandemic, and I think I’ve tried them all. :) I learned how to program a chatbot, practiced photography, and even recorded a song. However, nothing seemed to stick when I was being honest with myself.
There were a couple of things that I liked doing; for instance, when it came to chatbots, I loved the process of creating the logic behind the bot, especially creating decision tree diagrams and flow maps. I spent most of my time working on the visual part of the app, while the coding itself wasn’t something I enjoyed to the extent of being able to do it daily. That all lead to one field — Design. Unfortunately, I had never heard about UX and UI Design before, and I was under the false impression that every designer should have drawing skills. This was probably the only thing I couldn’t do.
I was fortunate when I stumbled upon the term UX/UI design and met a couple of designers. I immediately began to learn the basics from Youtube and by reading articles.
Therefore, I decided to find a mentor to help me become a designer. It was one of the best decisions I have ever made in my entire life.
I realized that no matter how passionate or independent I was, I lacked structure and some guidance from an expert in the industry. When I am passionate about something, I let it absorb me completely. So a little bit of guidance to accelerate my transition to UX was the thing I needed.
I knew that I could learn the basics of the process myself, and I am really good at gathering resources and applying what I’ve learned. However, not many resources out there challenge you to think deeper, to see beyond the apparent need for any Design deliverable. This is why I decided the next step for me is to work with a mentor and challenge myself to think beyond the standard UX process. Mento offered me both.
The mentor I had is still an important part of my life, and I can easily say we’ve built a beautiful friendship and collaboration. Whenever we talk, I end the call with a new outlook on life, full of energy.
People in my life are important to me, and I had the chance to meet and work with incredible Designers, who turned into friends. We visited other countries, tasted food together, and learned from each other to grow as Designers. I don’t think this would have been so easily achievable if I hadn’t joined this community.
I think one of my mistakes is wasting time perfecting screens and focusing on details nobody will even capture. I started to resonate with the quote “perfect is the enemy of the good,” and I will try to embrace it more in the future. Sometimes you don’t have all the time to spend on the project, and postponing showing your work until it’s perfect can lead to a wasted chance. It’s essential to make things better and strive to improve yourself and your designs, and the only way to do this is to show them and put them to work as early as possible, even if they are not perfect. You never know where the next idea will come from: it might be from your mentor, your colleagues, users, or clients. I recently started reading about the 80–20 rule, and I recommend it.
Practice as much as possible, keeping in mind that it is not the tool that is important but the principles behind it. Don’t focus too much on learning a tool perfectly and getting started with other topics only when you’ve mastered it. Let me tell you a secret: you will never know all the nooks and crannies of any Design tool. Tools and needs evolve, so having a solid foundation is vital. Don’t get bogged down in details; try to understand how the process works, then make it work for you.
Also, when it comes to UX work, as questions as much as possible. It’s essential to understand every detail of your work and explain it to others, either your colleagues or your stakeholders.
Another essential thing is exploration. Don’t be afraid to try new tools, processes, and visual styles. Keep an open mind and be curious; it’s the only way you find your true calling and what excites you the most. Even after some time in the industry, I still stumble upon unique designs, ideas, and studies, which help me take my work to the next level.
I don’t think about career progression in terms of titles or status. I don’t particularly appreciate it when people are constantly fixated on their years of experience and titles because this is not how one should measure progress. If you are a good designer, then you are a good designer — it’s as simple as that. My goal, for now, is to work on projects from various industries to be fluent in the ones I like the most.
I love Designs that solve a real problem but can delight people simultaneously. Designs that make people feel they are in front of something truly special. Where usability, logic, and visual delight meet, that is where my place is. I am also interested in leveraging motion and animation as part of my Design work, in creating products that not only make people’s lives easier but leave them in awe at the same time.
You can get in touch with Volodymyr here:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/vsev
Dribble:https://dribbble.com/Severynenko
