What's your current role?

So my current role is I'm a mid-weight interaction designer within the department for business and trade, which was previously the department for international trade. I work in a multidisciplinary team with kind of other designers and, yeah, other technology professionals.

Did you start your career as a mid-weight?

I started as a junior, and then they evolved the role, so they scrapped the junior position, and I got a kind of automatic promotion. And from there, there's a mid-weight interaction designer; there's a senior interaction designer, and then a lead. That's as in within the department I'm in.

How would you describe what you do as an interaction designer?

I would say interaction designer is just another word for user experience designer. I think the roles are quite similar. So it's about identifying the problem, coming up with wireframes, designing solutions, and facilitating workshops with other kinds of content designers and with developers, product managers, and delivery managers to solve solutions for basically government projects.

Favorite project to date?

I'd say my favourite project is my current project, which is a project I would expand your business on. Essentially, it's a self-service investor tool for people [00:02:00] who are overseas investors. They're looking to basically set up a business in this country.

They would use the tool to find out about, you know, laws and regulations planning how to essentially start setting up their business. And they could also kind of get in touch with internal advisors who would. Yeah, direct and with kind of one-to-one support.

What does a typical day look like in your life?

If I'm in the office, it looks a bit different to when I'm working from home.

Work from home day, obviously don't have commute, which is nice. I would usually get up in the morning eat and then I'd have a stand up. Usually we have it around 9:45, everyone goes through the JIRA board. So that's like a, a tool where it has kind of tickets for, for each of the disciplines.

And then, yeah, the day would usually consist of segments. So like designing there might be a workshop. There might be a stakeholder call. Yeah, there might be a call between kind of internal.

So yeah, and then [with] the office, I guess the only difference is.

We have an office called Claxton house. There are good facilities like there's huge whiteboards and, rooms where you do different types of ideation sessions, which you probably couldn't do over, over like Invision whiteboard. So, yeah, that's, that's the main difference, but I would say they're roughly similar.

First UX salary?

So my salary, when I first started was £34,700 and then it went up when I got the promotion £43,600 or something like that.

What was you doing before Interaction Design?

I was in an economist role within Ministry of Justice, which is, which is super similar. It was kind of similar pay bands and stuff.

What inspired the job switch from being an economist?

I didn't enjoy the day to day, I didn't enjoy Excel based tasks. I'll be honest, [I didn't enjoy] the people I worked with, I just didn't, there was nothing about the job I enjoyed. I wanted to try something different something a bit more creative, something I think that suits my skill set better, something that is in tech.

Do you have a degree?

Yeah, I had a degree but I don't think I needed it, to be honest. It's hard to say, but I don't, I don't think, I think once you've got your foot in the door, I think, it's, it's kind of secondary, to be honest.

How did Love Circular help you get job ready?

They teach you the fundamentals. They teach you how to work collaboratively with other kind of designers.

They help you get that the case studies ready, show you the processes. So yeah, how to structure a case study and kind of the things that you might be working on in a role. And then, yeah, they help you build out the portfolio which I think is really important. And also how to tailor a CV which a recruiter would look at and be like, "yeah, I think he'd be suitable for our position."

Did you have any design experience before like joining Circular?

No. Not a single day. I didn't even do graphic design in school.

I really wanted to, but yeah, I just got this fed [narrative] that there's no money [in design] you need to do finance. You need to follow the money, you need to do economics but I was really good at art in school, but I just never pursued it.

What was the toughest part of the learning process?

Within the UX role, I honestly think there are small similarities [to being an economist], you still have to think in the logic. You can't get too creative, if that makes sense. You have to think about constraints when designing, you have to think about the developer, "can they implement this?" I don't think it was too much difficult in that sense.

You can use previous roles that [have] examples of problem solving. And I think that's the one where I think of my first interview, like I said, I had limited experience. So I did have to draw on my old roles and. Show examples of problem solving working with other people, these are really like important things to, to people who are looking to hire.

How did you find your first interviews?

I don't want to sound arrogant... I just thought it was really simple and like, I just, maybe it was the, the government that interview process is really simple and easy. It's one interview. There was three panelists and they just ask questions that if you prepare, just prepare, you should be okay If you can like maintain conversation and, you know, deliver your points

What motivated you to become a designer instead of anything you could have become?

Yeah I think out of all the traditional roles. If you think of people going to banking they go into finance they go into even like front end developing or some sort of tech role, I think It is the most if you're looking for a creative outlet.

I think it's a very good choice. It's Well like paid there's a lot of benefits of working in like a technology role. So, I think I just weighed everything off and it just seemed like a really, again I came across your, your company and it just, it just felt like really right at the time. So, just went for it.

Have you experienced impostor syndrome as a designer?

I think I don't show it at all, but definitely, yeah, definitely. I think, I don't, I don't know. I think everyone does, especially at the start. When you're trying to show why they hired you, what you can bring to the team and so on, but I think that's natural.  

What would you do differently if you were to start your product design journey from scratch again?

I would have started five years before. I would have, literally, that's all I would have done. I would have started earlier.

I think I remember you saying, I think "people try and branch out to like coding and or like they focus on [multiple things, then] spread it too thin." Yeah. Find your niche and then really focus on the skills that you need, like: user testing, prototyping, user research, working with problems and, yeah, just focus on your niche.

What does your current work setup look like?

They gave quite a good laptop, it's like a M2 MacBook, I have a mouse, I have that whole desk set up but I don't use it, I kind of work off the laptop. I can focus [better]

But yeah, I don't need too much. I think a mouse is enough. The trackpad is a bit fiddly sometimes. Just a mouse and the monitor, the screen, the laptop, whatever.

Keep it simple. Yeah, keep it simple.

What's your favorite album if you listen to music or podcast?

I don't really listen to I don't really listen to music outside of gym or like a car. I'll be honest, I prefer like a podcast. I would listen to just random [podcasts] like, there's random like football ones, the big six.

I don't know if you ever heard of that. I like the Gary Neville overlap podcasts. It's called the overlap. It's pretty good. Yeah, I like the football ones. And then there's just like some random stuff I watch as well. There are Islamic ones. Yeah, there is different stuff I'm interested in.