Career Chat #1: 10 Questions to Get to Know Me (with Charles)
Jan 28, 2024
(Greetings)
Hello Charles, it's very nice to meet you and thanks for the opportunity to talk! :)
I'm very excited to be talking with you about the product designer position at Match Group.
(Me lately)
I've been focusing on exploring new opportunities these days. I was unfortunate to be laid off a couple of months ago, but the extra time has allowed me to refine my new skills and re-new portfolio while enjoying the summer weather.
(Lay-off reason)
I was laid off due to company re-organization and cost-cutting measures.
To be honest, the entire US-based product design team was affected, as the company decided to cut the budget for US employees and shift resources to more cost-effective locations like Portugal and India. So my job was impacted as well, and I was laid off nearly 3 months ago.
Can you tell about your background?
Sure, first off, my name is Soyoung. I'm currently based in LA.
My expertise lies in user experience design and product branding, but these days I'm particularly focused on product design.
I previously worked as a product designer at Hitachi Vantara for over a year and a half. I was part of the product design team. We utilized design thinking methodology within a storytelling culture. I don't know if you heard of Hitachi vantara. but its known for heir in computer data storage systems, and I played a key role in leading their data management platform, called Data Catalog. Additionally, I contributed to Hitachi Vantara's portals, including their documentation and learning portals.
My responsibilities included UX design, where we conducted usability testing, and performing UX reviews. I closely collaborated with Project Managers to develop frameworks and prototypes that communicated new design visions, facilitating decision-making within our team. also collaborated a lot with the engineering team, I defined, developed, and delivered visual designs for consumer-facing environments.
Full-stack, back-end, and front-end web development
The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) Occupational Outlook Handbook tends to group web developers and digital designers into one category. However, they define them separately, stating that web developers create and maintain websites and are responsible for the technical aspects including performance and capacity. Web or digital designers, on the other hand, are responsible for the look and functionality of websites and interfaces. They develop, create, and test the layout, functions, and navigation for usability. Web developers can focus on the back-end, front-end, or full-stack development, and typically utilize a range of programming languages, libraries, and frameworks to do so. Web designers may work more closely with front-end engineers to establish the user-end functionality and appearance of a site.
Are web designers in demand in 2022?
In our ever-increasingly digital environment, there is a constant need for websites—and therefore for web designers and developers. With 17.4 billion websites in existence as of January 2020, the demand for web developers is only expected to rise.Web designers with significant coding experience are typically in higher demand, and can usually expect a higher salary. Like all jobs, there are likely to be a range of opportunities, some of which are better paid than others. But certain skill sets are basic to web design, most of which are key to how to become a web designer in 2022.
