From Architecture to UX/UI Design
I remember vividly on my second day of the job going on a site visit with my boss who showed me first hand what a seasoned designer sees. The inaccessible door knobs, the unusable narrow doors, and the underappreciated concrete columns. This invaluable experience ingrained the fact that design is more than aesthetics, it is about function and feasibility.
A pivotal moment in my career is when I had the honor to showcase a 3D model I created to a prominent client of their envisioned renovated house. Being able to directly see the overwhelmingly positive impact the work had on the client is immensely rewarding, but I wanted these moments to occur more often.
This led me to pursue UX/UI Design, carrying over an emphasis on accessible design, usability considerations, and a user centered mindset from Architecture.
A Unique Perspective
How competitive gaming complements UX/UI Design
Although I bring many skills over from Architecture, my experience playing games competitively for a decade (top 0.2%) provides a unique and rigorously refined set of skills.
In competitive gaming, you constantly scrutinize the opponent’s micro behaviors to gain subtle, but major insights to gain a competitive advantage (some can be game deciding). This is especially relevant for UX designers because it will make it easier to pick up on subtle cues when interacting with others (Eg. user interviews, internal team collaboration, etc) to discuss topics that were not explicitly stated.
When you compete at a high level, you will notice you tend to outgrow most of the available resources to learn from. This means you start to heavily lean into your own observations, judgment, and intuition to improve than what others say or commonly do. This is important as a UX Designer because we are constantly evolving with society and the future is always unknown to us, but it is our job to make the unknown future a reality.