Here is what you missed:
Saturday, 6th of November The Google Developer Student Club at The Open University invited Procheta Nag to take over the stage.
She shared about her journey of getting into a design career coming from a Computer Science background and securing a Permanent Full-time job as a UI/UX Designer. She shared her learning resources, strategies, and skills development to be a UX Designer. And at the end of her speaking session, we had a Q&A where the crowd could ask her their questions.
“The most important thing is your interest in becoming a UX/UI Designer, it doesn’t matter what background you have, even if it is within the technology field or not”
This could be applied to everything in life and sometimes we miss out on things because of many different aspects in our life. Procheta shared a bit of her personal struggle on the pressure to either become this or that and how it all started.
“Many people think that in order to become a UX/UI Designer you need to go through a Bootcamp, and that is not true!”
Procheta had always been interested in art and design and got into computer science after knowing you could continue and do design. After getting into computer science it was quite different than expected because there was a lot of coding happening. She found what interested her the most and found out what would also be useful.
While many subjects weren’t what she was passionate about, she was always trying to do things related to design (software, app, hci, etc.) in order to keep her interest.
We cannot always get instantly what we want, sometimes we must go through difficult paths or do things we are not interested in in order for us to get what we want.
She explored apparel Design as a passion on the side of her studies and worked with VIDA Brand Design. This was one of the aspects where her knowledge from computer science helped as she was designing in 3D.
She continued with a masters in order to find her way towards her design goals. The masters helped her to work with design later on and on the side, but the degree wasn’t centred towards design. She had to do a lot of research so not much design was done.
Procheta learned from teaching 8 design courses at her university, with 78 students per class, she even thought about photography.
“Nobody is judging you when you study by yourself, but when you explain things that is when you can learn from the questions you might get that you don’t know about.”
She got questions and said she will have the answer for the next class, so she read and studied about the questions and taught them the next coming class. This helped so much in her development.
Procheta then proceeded to talk about various designs and what happens behind the scenes.
Designs such as logos might seem small but there is so much going on behind, there is emotion and the representation of the brand behind it, as well as the mission the brand wants to achieve. And not to forget, the time used to create this. You have to know what to express with a few things, and you have to achieve the correct colours.
Procheta, like many others during the lockdown, took her time to take courses about design and to learn about the different resources, all online while studying, teaching and designing.
A great tip we got from her was that in order to get used to criticism, doing voluntary projects helped a lot. She would learn how to understand her clients and would learn to take criticism and turn it into something good.
Now, Procheta is working full time as a UI/UX Designer at BGC Engineering Inc, Canada, where between many meetings she designs various things from logos to software, aswell as teaching and doing sessions when she can.
She is an incredibly strong, sweet and intelligent woman. I encourage everyone to join her lessons and events, she has so much to offer and we all have so much to learn from her.
Find her on various platforms, here.
Thank you!
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