**Finding Meaningful Connections as a UX Designer**

As a UX designer, networking can be a daunting task, especially with a busy schedule. However, finding meaningful connections with other designers can be invaluable in staying up-to-date with industry trends and best practices. One approach is to leverage existing networks, such as friends of friends who know UX designers. A 30-minute coffee date can be a great way to ask for feedback on one's portfolio and gain insights from someone with experience.

**What it Means to be a Great UX Designer**

To be considered a great UX designer, one must not only prioritize user experience but also align business goals. This requires finding a balance between meeting the needs of both users and stakeholders. A good UX designer is like a mediator, working to find common ground between the two. User research plays a crucial role in this process, providing valuable insights that inform design decisions.

**The Challenges of Proving UX Design Value**

Despite the growing importance of UX design, many companies still struggle to value its contributions. In some cases, UX designers may find themselves at odds with engineers who prioritize technical aspects of product development over user-centered design. This can make it challenging for UX designers to prove their worth to their company and team. To overcome this hurdle, designers must be prepared to present their research and designs in a clear and compelling way, using data and validation to support their claims.

**Synthesizing Research**

When presenting research findings, UX designers can benefit from various tools and techniques. Moderated testing, such as moderated Zoom sessions with participants, can provide valuable insights into user behavior and preferences. Unmoderated testing methods, like A/B testing and user surveys, can also be effective in gathering data. By analyzing and synthesizing this data, designers can identify patterns and trends that inform design decisions.

**The Power of Research**

One key aspect of research is the ability to bring it to life through storytelling and visual aids. Small video clips of real users providing feedback on designs can be particularly effective in silencing skepticism and convincing stakeholders of the importance of UX design. By leveraging research data, designers can create a compelling narrative that highlights the value of user-centered design.

**Establishing an Online Presence**

To reach a wider audience, UX designers can establish an online presence through platforms like Instagram, YouTube, and blogs. This allows them to share their work, thoughts, and experiences with others in the industry. By leveraging these channels, designers can build a community of like-minded individuals who can support and learn from each other.

**Conclusion**

In conclusion, finding meaningful connections as a UX designer requires effort but can be rewarding. By prioritizing user experience, aligning business goals, and effectively presenting research findings, designers can establish themselves as valuable contributors to their companies and teams. Additionally, establishing an online presence can help designers connect with others in the industry and share their knowledge and expertise.

**About the Author**

Christine is a UX designer who specializes in creating user-centered designs that meet both business goals and user needs. She is active on Instagram (@chunbuns) and has a YouTube channel (Chun Buns). Her blog can be found on her Instagram profile, where she also shares updates about her work and experiences as a UX designer.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enI am my name is Molly and I'm here for springboard and we're here with Christine a product designer instacart and a UX youtuber thanks so much for being here Christine of course awesome so let's just start from the beginning how did you become a UX designer so my journey is pretty wounded um I started off as a chemistry major in college I studied chemistry and I that's when I started youtubing um I filmed a lot on my fashion and makeup and eventually I got a job out here in San Francisco at a skincare startup and I was managing a lot of influencer and doing a lot of social media campaigns and then after a year I realized that you know this wasn't my route I didn't want to continue into marketing and I wanted something much more creative in my day to day job and so I learned about UX design while I was in San Francisco just grabbing coffee with a lot of friends and then so after a year at the startup I quit my job enrolled in a bootcamp similar to springboard did that for ten weeks built my portfolio and then I got a job after a month my first full-time UX job at a real estate tech company and now I'm at insta car designing for our shopper app which is like a driver app when you consider over so cool what a journey that's so exciting to hear that kind of your past impacted where you are at now so very awesome um so what would you say your favorite thing is about being at UX designer there's a lot of different components to UX design and what I get really excited about for UX design is that complexity I'm never doing the same thing over and over with each day like one day I'm doing whiteboarding and just you know mapping out all the problems that I have to think about and then the next day I'm talking with my product manager and scoping out you know different strategies that have more to do with the product then the actual like screens so I love the complicated aspect of UX design and how I can just be creative in very different aspects yeah it sounds very creative and it sounds like you're able to do something different every day which is probably really exciting for you so let's say I'm new to the UX design world what advice would you have for someone who is starting out in UX design so I think what's difficult about starting out in your sign right now is that the market is very saturated with a lot of people who want to get into your design but the demand is for more senior designers so it's really hard in that aspect I would say to keep creating work and I think that's the only way to really build upon your portfolio is not to just focus on two projects and then expect to get a job at your dream company but really every experience that you have every project that you work on whether it be a personal project or a project in collaboration with a start-up founder that you know of anything is going to really build upon that stone that you've set at the very beginning so just continue creating work and continue learning and I think the hunger that a lot of junior designers have is something that is you know really inspiring to me and so just keep that going don't let the hunger die down that's so cool it sounds like a lot of your passions also go into your work as well so I imagine your creative outside and in work as well I mean so I was taking a look at your LinkedIn profile and it stated that your design philosophy is everything I create is practical before it is beautiful what does that mean to you so I'm a pretty practical person and among my friends like when I asked them you know what are three words that you think of when you think of me and they'll always say the first thing is practicality and I think it comes down to purposefulness and does my design have purpose and if it doesn't whether it fits you know pixel-perfect or really pretty and beautiful to look at to me the it's not long-lasting and it's not sustainable if it doesn't sir a specific purpose and so I've kind of created that around what I think I stand for as a person and also what I design I always want it to be purposeful so the UX industry has a lot of UX specific jargon how do you navigate those different terminologies yeah so I think jargon is pretty nebulous in the UX world because of something that's pretty new still the industry itself hasn't existed for that long but aside from the jargon I think what's really important is knowing exactly what the title or that word really means and break it down and the context of it also matter is so like you know there's a lot of confusion around like is a product design as a UX what's what's the difference between product design UX design or interaction design UI design I think when it comes down to it I'm really understanding for each company and for the team what does it mean and I think over time you'll just learn what those terms mean for different contexts let's kind of take a little bit deeper into the design process what would you say your favorite part of the design process is my favorite part about the design process is at the beginning of the project where I discuss with a product manager the product strategy around what we're trying to build and I think that always is the anchor that we're going to keep going back to when we're talking about the small button changes and the interactions that are going to change is really like okay why are we discussing this is because we're trying to move you know this KPI which is key performance indicator or this metric and always like being reminded why we're working on this project is really important part of that and so when I'm discussing the product strategy portion of you know like it's not going to be just minimal changes but we have to just rip this whole thing apart because we're trying to drive X results and so that's my favorite part of the design process where we're looking at things very holistically and not just you know little tiny interaction you I components on the screen um in contrast what would you say is the most compute saying or the most challenging part of being in the design process yeah I don't really enjoy presenting in front of people um even though I do a lot of YouTube that's really just like me and the camera but when it comes to having design meetings with stakeholders and defending my design and receiving feedback that's still something that I'm learning and trying to improve it helps me grow as a designer in that specific arena when I am in the meeting with other designers and they're presenting and I'm hearing feedback and how they respond to the feedback that is being given to them but I think that's something that is super valuable as a designer to have that skill of defending your designs and it really comes down to when you're designing always asking yourself why am i designing this button green why am i designing this screen with a modal instead of you know an entire page so asking why you're building certain things will help answer those questions and help defend your designs and also sell your designs to the stakeholders that are going to approve your designs and that way you can move forward with your designs so I'm building off the design process do you have any examples of any good apps or websites that you feel feature high quality UX design so I recently found out about this website called mobbin comm mo BB I am calm and it just has screenshots of different apps and I look about a lot because what helps me become a better designer is just looking at all these different apps that are doing design right and some of the apps I really like to check out is wealthfront duolingo is a great app they have really great interactions so just like always being on the lookout of different apps and checking them out and seeing the different interactions that they have and see how they do on boarding helps me get inspired with different ideas so networking is huge these days right Kristine so do you attend any UX networking events and if so do you have any recommendations for students who are interested in that and who would like to meet other UX designers so I don't actually do a lot of networking I don't do networking and the traditional sense of going to meetups just because of my busy schedule but what I did find really helpful when I was just coming off of bootcamp was finding designers within my network maybe a friend of a friend knows a UX designer and going up to them for 30 minute coffee date and asking them for feedback on my portfolio so we have something to talk about rather than just catching up and asking them about their journey so what does it mean to you to be a great UX designer a great UX designer means pushing for great user experience but not only that meeting business goals at the same time because if you're just pushing for user experience and great user experience but you're not really shedding light into why the company should be focused on that then you know you're not doing your job as a UX designer and so I think of it this way if the business goal is this and this is what the users want I'm kind of in the middle making everyone happy or both parties happy and user research plays a huge role in that as well so you know I think it always goes back to our am i meeting my business goals because that's my employer and so am i meeting the business goals while making the users happy in contrast to that question also what would you say is one of the biggest challenges and being UX designer or do you have any specific stories where you've had to kind of fight for your right to be a UX designer a lot of companies do value UX design but when I think about the processes in which UX design plays a role in pushing out a product it can be actually quite the contrary and so one of the most challenging part about my job is proving the value of UX design to my company in to my team because a lot of times how these products get built is through engineering and the engineers are the ones designing the product when it starts off and so when they actually hire designers were kind of reversing all the tech debt and all the design that that we have and so that's like proving the value of UX design is most challenging and that can come in the form of like when I'm presenting meetings and presenting my designs with you know validation from user research I get a lot of pushback sometimes and I think that is because of the way that things have always been in certain teams it's always been very engineering focused and now we're trying to be more user focused and experience focus and design focused which can be you can have a lot of resistance while you're trying to turn that around how would you say that you like to synthesize your research what tools did you use and how do you present your research to internal stakeholders what I've done previously is a lot of moderated and unmoderated testing so moderated testing is our when I'm on zoom with these participants for 30 minutes and I walk them through a prototype and I ask them questions about what they think of the page and what they think they're seeing and really getting their thoughts without asking leading questions I find a lot of value in research because these are actual users and I think it's really powerful when I present like small video clips of what they actually say about this feature that a lot of people in the room have opinions about you know and when you bring in that little video clip of the actual user just silences the room because these are actual people that are using our product and this is what they think about the design and so I often pair up with the research team to hold these moderated testings usually I use the rule of five which is an article that Nielsen Norman group had posted a long time ago and it's basically saying that when when you talk to five users you can uncover 80% of the problems that lie in your design so we use that model to recruit five people and then just do rapid it or from those findings and just make improvements from there well thank you so much for being here Christine we really appreciate getting a little more of a view and a sneak peek into your life as a UX designer but before we go is there anything that you'd like to plug or mention and how can our viewers find you yes I'm pretty active on Instagram so if you're on Instagram you can follow me at ton buns all my handles are Chun buns and I have a youtube channel called Chun buns as well so you can find me there but I am most active on Instagram just because that's something that's most convenient for me but I also have a blog so all my links are on my Instagram as well so you can find me there great well thank you so much from all of us at springboard and it was great getting to meet you thanks for having meI am my name is Molly and I'm here for springboard and we're here with Christine a product designer instacart and a UX youtuber thanks so much for being here Christine of course awesome so let's just start from the beginning how did you become a UX designer so my journey is pretty wounded um I started off as a chemistry major in college I studied chemistry and I that's when I started youtubing um I filmed a lot on my fashion and makeup and eventually I got a job out here in San Francisco at a skincare startup and I was managing a lot of influencer and doing a lot of social media campaigns and then after a year I realized that you know this wasn't my route I didn't want to continue into marketing and I wanted something much more creative in my day to day job and so I learned about UX design while I was in San Francisco just grabbing coffee with a lot of friends and then so after a year at the startup I quit my job enrolled in a bootcamp similar to springboard did that for ten weeks built my portfolio and then I got a job after a month my first full-time UX job at a real estate tech company and now I'm at insta car designing for our shopper app which is like a driver app when you consider over so cool what a journey that's so exciting to hear that kind of your past impacted where you are at now so very awesome um so what would you say your favorite thing is about being at UX designer there's a lot of different components to UX design and what I get really excited about for UX design is that complexity I'm never doing the same thing over and over with each day like one day I'm doing whiteboarding and just you know mapping out all the problems that I have to think about and then the next day I'm talking with my product manager and scoping out you know different strategies that have more to do with the product then the actual like screens so I love the complicated aspect of UX design and how I can just be creative in very different aspects yeah it sounds very creative and it sounds like you're able to do something different every day which is probably really exciting for you so let's say I'm new to the UX design world what advice would you have for someone who is starting out in UX design so I think what's difficult about starting out in your sign right now is that the market is very saturated with a lot of people who want to get into your design but the demand is for more senior designers so it's really hard in that aspect I would say to keep creating work and I think that's the only way to really build upon your portfolio is not to just focus on two projects and then expect to get a job at your dream company but really every experience that you have every project that you work on whether it be a personal project or a project in collaboration with a start-up founder that you know of anything is going to really build upon that stone that you've set at the very beginning so just continue creating work and continue learning and I think the hunger that a lot of junior designers have is something that is you know really inspiring to me and so just keep that going don't let the hunger die down that's so cool it sounds like a lot of your passions also go into your work as well so I imagine your creative outside and in work as well I mean so I was taking a look at your LinkedIn profile and it stated that your design philosophy is everything I create is practical before it is beautiful what does that mean to you so I'm a pretty practical person and among my friends like when I asked them you know what are three words that you think of when you think of me and they'll always say the first thing is practicality and I think it comes down to purposefulness and does my design have purpose and if it doesn't whether it fits you know pixel-perfect or really pretty and beautiful to look at to me the it's not long-lasting and it's not sustainable if it doesn't sir a specific purpose and so I've kind of created that around what I think I stand for as a person and also what I design I always want it to be purposeful so the UX industry has a lot of UX specific jargon how do you navigate those different terminologies yeah so I think jargon is pretty nebulous in the UX world because of something that's pretty new still the industry itself hasn't existed for that long but aside from the jargon I think what's really important is knowing exactly what the title or that word really means and break it down and the context of it also matter is so like you know there's a lot of confusion around like is a product design as a UX what's what's the difference between product design UX design or interaction design UI design I think when it comes down to it I'm really understanding for each company and for the team what does it mean and I think over time you'll just learn what those terms mean for different contexts let's kind of take a little bit deeper into the design process what would you say your favorite part of the design process is my favorite part about the design process is at the beginning of the project where I discuss with a product manager the product strategy around what we're trying to build and I think that always is the anchor that we're going to keep going back to when we're talking about the small button changes and the interactions that are going to change is really like okay why are we discussing this is because we're trying to move you know this KPI which is key performance indicator or this metric and always like being reminded why we're working on this project is really important part of that and so when I'm discussing the product strategy portion of you know like it's not going to be just minimal changes but we have to just rip this whole thing apart because we're trying to drive X results and so that's my favorite part of the design process where we're looking at things very holistically and not just you know little tiny interaction you I components on the screen um in contrast what would you say is the most compute saying or the most challenging part of being in the design process yeah I don't really enjoy presenting in front of people um even though I do a lot of YouTube that's really just like me and the camera but when it comes to having design meetings with stakeholders and defending my design and receiving feedback that's still something that I'm learning and trying to improve it helps me grow as a designer in that specific arena when I am in the meeting with other designers and they're presenting and I'm hearing feedback and how they respond to the feedback that is being given to them but I think that's something that is super valuable as a designer to have that skill of defending your designs and it really comes down to when you're designing always asking yourself why am i designing this button green why am i designing this screen with a modal instead of you know an entire page so asking why you're building certain things will help answer those questions and help defend your designs and also sell your designs to the stakeholders that are going to approve your designs and that way you can move forward with your designs so I'm building off the design process do you have any examples of any good apps or websites that you feel feature high quality UX design so I recently found out about this website called mobbin comm mo BB I am calm and it just has screenshots of different apps and I look about a lot because what helps me become a better designer is just looking at all these different apps that are doing design right and some of the apps I really like to check out is wealthfront duolingo is a great app they have really great interactions so just like always being on the lookout of different apps and checking them out and seeing the different interactions that they have and see how they do on boarding helps me get inspired with different ideas so networking is huge these days right Kristine so do you attend any UX networking events and if so do you have any recommendations for students who are interested in that and who would like to meet other UX designers so I don't actually do a lot of networking I don't do networking and the traditional sense of going to meetups just because of my busy schedule but what I did find really helpful when I was just coming off of bootcamp was finding designers within my network maybe a friend of a friend knows a UX designer and going up to them for 30 minute coffee date and asking them for feedback on my portfolio so we have something to talk about rather than just catching up and asking them about their journey so what does it mean to you to be a great UX designer a great UX designer means pushing for great user experience but not only that meeting business goals at the same time because if you're just pushing for user experience and great user experience but you're not really shedding light into why the company should be focused on that then you know you're not doing your job as a UX designer and so I think of it this way if the business goal is this and this is what the users want I'm kind of in the middle making everyone happy or both parties happy and user research plays a huge role in that as well so you know I think it always goes back to our am i meeting my business goals because that's my employer and so am i meeting the business goals while making the users happy in contrast to that question also what would you say is one of the biggest challenges and being UX designer or do you have any specific stories where you've had to kind of fight for your right to be a UX designer a lot of companies do value UX design but when I think about the processes in which UX design plays a role in pushing out a product it can be actually quite the contrary and so one of the most challenging part about my job is proving the value of UX design to my company in to my team because a lot of times how these products get built is through engineering and the engineers are the ones designing the product when it starts off and so when they actually hire designers were kind of reversing all the tech debt and all the design that that we have and so that's like proving the value of UX design is most challenging and that can come in the form of like when I'm presenting meetings and presenting my designs with you know validation from user research I get a lot of pushback sometimes and I think that is because of the way that things have always been in certain teams it's always been very engineering focused and now we're trying to be more user focused and experience focus and design focused which can be you can have a lot of resistance while you're trying to turn that around how would you say that you like to synthesize your research what tools did you use and how do you present your research to internal stakeholders what I've done previously is a lot of moderated and unmoderated testing so moderated testing is our when I'm on zoom with these participants for 30 minutes and I walk them through a prototype and I ask them questions about what they think of the page and what they think they're seeing and really getting their thoughts without asking leading questions I find a lot of value in research because these are actual users and I think it's really powerful when I present like small video clips of what they actually say about this feature that a lot of people in the room have opinions about you know and when you bring in that little video clip of the actual user just silences the room because these are actual people that are using our product and this is what they think about the design and so I often pair up with the research team to hold these moderated testings usually I use the rule of five which is an article that Nielsen Norman group had posted a long time ago and it's basically saying that when when you talk to five users you can uncover 80% of the problems that lie in your design so we use that model to recruit five people and then just do rapid it or from those findings and just make improvements from there well thank you so much for being here Christine we really appreciate getting a little more of a view and a sneak peek into your life as a UX designer but before we go is there anything that you'd like to plug or mention and how can our viewers find you yes I'm pretty active on Instagram so if you're on Instagram you can follow me at ton buns all my handles are Chun buns and I have a youtube channel called Chun buns as well so you can find me there but I am most active on Instagram just because that's something that's most convenient for me but I also have a blog so all my links are on my Instagram as well so you can find me there great well thank you so much from all of us at springboard and it was great getting to meet you thanks for having me\n"