It’s been almost 3 years since finishing my UX/UI Design course.
What really is it to be a UX Designer? I finished my course in 2024, excited and motivated to go through job boards and do interviews for the position of a newly minted UX/UI Designer. There was an expectation, and then there was the imposter syndrome of knowing you know, yet the internal feeling had not caught up with logic. That was the most challenging part of my experience, being a career-shifter in my late 30’s to 40’s. That phase of being too experienced in life, yet not experienced enough for the requirements of the offered position— that was an internal reckoning, but it was also a statement I encountered in some interviews. That was tough, and it made me question my skills.
The truth is, looking back, I confused UX and UI, even if on paper we learned the difference. I was enmeshed in literacy vs. application. I didn’t know how it applied to my life and work nor did I know how to define it in an experiential way. Maybe now I know better.
User Experience, I’ve come to realize, is something I’ve applied in my life since I knew how to sell. My entrepreneurial spirit had user experience ingrained in me since childhood. I’ve been selling things to friends and family, and later to real customers, my entire life. From selling stationery, erasers, and little air-fresheners called kisses to my classmates in kindergarten, to joining bazaars selling fashion accessories and jewelry in my college days, to later having a manufacturing workshop and a company that supplied products to corporations. I’ve been dealing with suppliers and customers since I was little.
As an Interior Designer, user experience was at the forefront of everything I did during my practice. You can’t do Interior Design without fully understanding a client’s wants and needs in a very personal way. To be good at it meant really getting to know what mattered to them, individually and collectively.
But customer service, this was something I learned really well when I worked for a photography company right after graduating from college in the early 2000’s. It was probably considered a start-up then, a passion project and entrepreneurial pursuit of the owner. The clientele was high-end, and the goal was to make family photos fun while delivering quality prints. I worked part-time at the front desk managing customers, but we were also taught to be all-around team members. This is also where I learned Photoshop and editing, with some photography on the side. It turned out to be one of the best on-the-job training experiences I’ve had, one that went beyond the job description, especially as I was fresh out of college.
My jobs had always had empathy and customer service integrated into the soul of my career as an entrepreneur and Interior Designer. It just became more “defined” and compartmentalized, in a good way, but for those practicing it in daily life, it can be hard to simply put it into words and find where we “fit most” in the description.
User Experience, to me, simply put, is knowing how to listen to people’s needs, assess and take into consideration what truly matters, then apply it using one’s own informed judgment, always grounded in research or data. It’s about making people feel seen, heard, and acknowledged within an experience, while still having the discernment and objectivity in how it’s executed, wherever it applies.
UI, on the other hand, is the practical application. We talk of user interface because that’s the tool, but whether it’s about creating a prototype for a shoe, bag, or box, building and renovating a house, or designing a website or an app, the end product must allow the user to experience it with joy in the simplest way possible. Be practical—the artistry can come later. This is also what probably differentiates it from art.
After almost three years of doing work as a UX/UI Designer, I can now confidently compare, analyze, and say that I’ve been a user experience designer all my life. What I really needed to learn in the process was the tool, which to me now is Figma— translating founders’ needs in a visual way to accommodate user needs in a practical way, using this tool. UX wasn’t something I “became” after I finished my course, instead it was the realization and full acceptance that it’s something I’ve been practicing all along, and a skill I’m actually good at. I just needed to know the language and tools.
It took a while, the path to present had its twists and turns, but what I got out of it was a clearer definition of my skills and a better understanding of myself through my work. And now, what matters is where and how I’ll be applying this in the present and in the future.