It’s now two years since our first cohort of students began their journey to a career in design with UX Academy.
We’ve been able to tell countless stories of how students landed jobs after the course—and now, with the passage of time, we’re delighted to be able to start talking to our alumni about how their first year or two has been on the job.
Today, we’re talking to Designlab graduate Diana Glozman. Before UX Academy, she worked in marketing in the financial sector, and taught English in South Korea and Japan. We discussed how she became a UX designer, and what she’s been working on during her first year in the industry!
Hey Diana! So what took you from teaching English to UX Academy?
After returning to the U.S., I was asked to do some technical editing work. I agreed, and found myself editing a Japanese book, The Non-Designer’s Guide To Design Thinking by Kuni Saso. Through editing the book, I discovered that many design techniques and thinking patterns came to me naturally… in fact, that I had been using them all along.
For instance, I have always thought visually. I would look for ways to venture out of my comfort zone to physically see new things and gather new experiences. I also realized that I excelled in tasks where I could use a combination of analytical and creative thinking—exactly what is needed to succeed in design.
I knew right away that I wanted a career in design, but I didn’t know what sector to go into. I started doing research on the various fields that involved design, and I narrowed it down to UX. Once I’d determined the next step in my career, I did more research into all the different paths—and discovered that there are a lot!
In fact, the whole process of figuring out the right path, and signing up for a course, took a good couple of months. I realized that for me, a structured UX bootcamp would be the most efficient way to gain the foundation I needed to break into the field. So I signed up for UX Academy, and the rest, as they say, is history!
A lo-fi prototype from one of Diana’s UX Academy capstone projects