My journey to becoming a user experience researcher
“For a list of all the ways technology has failed to improve the quality of life, please press three.” — Alice Kahn
It all started in 2020, no, not due to Covid-19, this was way before Covid happened. Then, it was only just an idea. My best human is a Product Designer #bestindesign, and i had previously worked amongst a group of amazing tech humans and that was were it all began. So, retrospectively, i’d say late 2019 was when the wind blew and 2020 was when i felt the spirit move but it was not until 2021 that i caught the anointing.
I searched the internet, went on a hunt. Did quizzes like “whICh Tech CAreer IS Right FOr YoU”, which tech career pays more and more importantly which one will ALLOW me not to have any idea what code means, very very important in my search then. But a lot of those and several Youtube videos later I still was not sold. I love writing but it just really stopped giving me joy at some point and there was only one motivation for me wanting to join the tech industry at the time — to make the tech money. I wanted to tap into this industry so bad because as far as i was concerned, it would not only earn me some money, it will also help with my travel/relocation plans. So, those two were my main motivations and it was so depressing to me. I just gotta love it if not i will never EVER do a good job at it. This is why it took me a year to not only find the right career in tech for me but to love the industry wholeheartedly!! Did i mention my boyfriend is also in tech? I mean it was all the initiation i needed really! Just seeing him work on products, design after design, was all the dorime for me.
Now, the terrible thing about having someone in tech guide you, especially with you not knowing exactly what you want, is that you will be introduced to so many tools, thrown in many different directions, know a little too much to throw you off and leave you damned clueless in the end. I learnt Figma without knowing what a prototype was, and i began building websites via Webflow’s #21DaysChallenge without knowing what CSS stood for. I was tired. And one other thing was i was told the areas in tech that would benefit me, and this was another bad idea for me. I took a course in Quality Assurance Testing, and i was in love up until my postman refused to deliver, GET would rather POST than SEND. I was looking forward to being a Testifier, as they were called, but as luck would not have it, i had joined a class with a classless and clueless instructor and that was that for QA. One good thing about it though, i loved the Usability Testing part and i was mighty glad when i discovered a path in Research where i would get to do a lot of that and then some on a regular basis.
I don’t remember exactly what made me settle for UXR, i really don’t, but i do know i loved it the minute i read about what it entailed. A couple of videos and several open tabs of medium articles later, i was ready. I did the search on my own this time and i was ready for it mentally too.
UXR was all about understanding people, getting into the very soul of people and knowing their deepest darkest fears. Well, not really, but yeah, really!!
As one who usually boasts of giving more sound advice to my therapist than she gives me, yeah, i was ready for my UXR journey indeed.
4 months and a couple of faux cases and 2 actual participations later, my portfolio is looking good.
