November 2016: UX in the Wild

Recently, KW's very own Sarah Klassen-Rempel (http://www.sarahklassenrempel.com) gave this talk at the UX Cambridge (http://uxcambridge.net/2016/) conference in the United Kingdom. Please join us as Sarah gives a hometown reprise!

One year ago, my idealistic view of what it would be like to work as a UX designer in the real world was shattered. I went from being surrounded by like-minded people, learning more UX and being able to approach projects my own way, to being the first and only UI/UX designer at a transportation management software company. It meant I needed to learn a lot of things, fast. And the things that I did learn were not things that I thought I would be learning when I started the job.

This talk, at its core, is about those things. The things I needed to learn and implement quickly — in order to go from drawing icons and being called the "UIX designer" to running sessions at a user group conference and visiting customers to talk directly to our users.

On the surface, this talk is about what it's like to go from being a full-time student to a full-time UX designer — in a place that has never had one before — and the unexpected challenges that came with that experience. But it's also a reminder that UX isn't always glamorous, a celebration of how far UX has come as a discipline, and a case study or testimony of how important mentorship can be.

The first time I did a version of this talk was at UX Cambridge this September (that's Cambridge, England, not Ontario), and I am really excited to have the opportunity to share it with my home community.

Connect with Sarah on Twitter (https://twitter.com/sarahklassen/), Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/sarah.klassen.rempel), and LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/in/sarahklassenrempel/).