 Thank you. Thank you. Thank you Cody. Hi everyone. Oh I guess it's the last talk, huh? However, it's everyone doing Yes More energy more energy. How's everyone doing? Thank you. Thank you How many of you here are designers better raise of hands? Cool. How many of you is our developers? Not so bad. Nice. All right So now I'm the only guy standing between you and Sunday dinner So I'll keep this short and sweet all right Before I start I would like to thank the organizers for giving me this opportunity and for all of you who Sacrifice yours precious Sunday night afternoon to listen to me All right, this is me. My name is chin Nice to meet you. I'm a UX designer I moved to Singapore three years ago from Thailand to work at Google But I haven't always been a designer I would like to share with all of you my journey from working as a software developer and how did I make the transition into UX design and probably some of the Important UX learning that I picked up the long the way. This is me from nine years ago I'm eating cake and I do still now you probably realize that I haven't changed that much I started my career as a software developer. I developed web applications mobile applications Websites back-end web services anything you can imagine. I strongly believe that coding is A truly amazing skill to have You can create anything From just a set of commands and a computer and boom you've got anything But as I progressed through my career, I start to find out that there are some missing piece from this skill One day I got a chance to visit one of my client So I made a web application for them just to help them with their daily work The client was struggling to use the software that I created So the client asked hey Jen How do you save and submit this task? It was like one of the most simple thing that they should know or I think they should know The client was frustrated and then he blamed himself from being not so tick savvy This is when I realized That the tools that I created Instead of helping that person It made him doubt himself This is when I learned my first lesson about UX user empathy There is no way for him to understand what I'm thinking how I'm designing the workflow Unless I actually tell him or I have to design something that's intuitive. I Needed to understand how he would interact with the software that I created In with the tools in order to create an interface that he can use About a year after that. So I'm getting older and more well worse with design development So I get to work on a bigger and more complicated project So I was asking to build this data visualization for the healthcare data in Thailand After three months of development, this is what we got so showing the maps We got something that we think it was quite great So and we are ready to hand it off to the client in the handoff presentation The next I could it comes in and then he said this is not what we want I think so. We probably shared an experience. We were like, oh Oops, I didn't design what you want So this is when I learned about one more important things Is to define the problem very clearly and very early in the process Who are we building it for? What is the purpose we're trying to solve achieve and what problem are we solving? I can see that that's a gap between me and the stakeholders. I didn't know at a time how to solve this problem I know that I know nothing about healthcare, but I'm quite good with my technology skill And I know that This executive is work in the field for decades like 20 years 30 years He knows everything about healthcare, but he doesn't really understand what technology can do for him So this is when I Realized that I needed some skill So I started to look out in other in the design discipline to find the answer I started very small I feel like I shouldn't take risks and then throw like my three years or seven years of hard work on software development So I started very small by doing a graphic design class. It was just ten classes. I Learned about grid system color theory Layouts typography Whatever it takes to make a good design good Instead of finding that answer to fill the gap and it teaches me that actually Design and creativity is trainable I'm I will tell you that right now like if you see me nine years ago. I'm not I cannot draw. I can do anything I can just code But design is like any other skills If you keep practicing you'll get better at it sometime later As the design class didn't solve my problem. I ran into this Ted talk This is probably one of the most inspiring to talk talk that you you guys probably seen before It was a Ted talk by team Brown So he's one of the person who popularized the word design thinking He talked about With this design thinking We can solve the fuzzy problem or the problem that we are not clear about We can work collaboratively with a mounted discipline People so we can utilize all the expertise from different field And he challenged us To think big and solve the problem that no one had imagined before at that time I immediately knew that this is the missing piece that I was looking for so I decided to take a leap of faith and Go and get a design degree so so Excuse me. I joined Indiana University in America I enrolled into two different programs that teach about design thinking There was a school of computing and there was a school of design in a school In a school of computing They teach us a very well-defined process. It's a six-step process that specifically Design for you to design software This is a very very easy to understand and easy to grasp process on the other hand in the design school They talk about the foundation thinking how the design thinking comes to be what are the founding fathers of design thinking? This helped me to understand that once you become very experienced about design process You can break the rules and mix and match whatever works for you And finally I learned how to do design process often doing a lot of projects a lot of practical work with a lot of different people two years went by very quickly and It's time for me to go back to Thailand To solve the problem with my new acquired skill. I rejoin the same company that I was working for And was very nice of them to accept me So I looked through all their main products Find all the recommendations and then give them suggestion that these are the things that you can do To improve your user experience My boss was very happy. He's like oh shit. Thank you but Why are these important and I felt wow my two years was like gone But he's asking a very legit question So I spent some time to think about it all the changes that I made All the recommendation that I made will cost him Any engineering work to fix anything? cost money So as a business person he's thinking what are the benefit of these? changes This is when I learned how to communicate the UX value So I went back look at a company analytics and say yeah from these five pages You've got 50% drop-off point these are 50% of people who visit your website. They could actually be potential your users He bought it. He made all the changes These are the five key skills that I think user UX design needs and These are the things that I picked up along the way Not long after something unexpected happened So I received a phone call From a long lost friend from a university who is working at Google at a time. He said Hey, Jen Do you want to work for Google? And the rest is history Of course, I say yes So I moved to Singapore and now I'm working at a Google I first joined as a product specialist and Slowly transition into the UX field and now I am in a UX team I want you to end this talk with two of my most important learnings and one message So as a UX designer We are the voice of the user If we don't represent the user no one else will In this competitive field of work Product managers is rushing trying to understand what it takes for a product to launch Engineers making sure the product is built and it's stable UX designer Make sure that the products we create fit the user needs and It's easy to use Product building is a marathon It's not a sprint We are here for a long run Focus on keeping the balance of your life be happy and create good product For myself, this is the way that I find my best work This is the way that we're sorry because for myself. I know this I'm only at best when I'm happy lastly, I Would like to leave you with a message from our CEO Sundar Pichai He said this in his year-end email What I love about Google is that we always looking ahead to improve things This what makes Google different and I feel very fortunate to be part of the team In the future, I want to be involved in building more innovative products solving bigger and bigger problems and improve lives in ways that I haven't imagined and And we can all be part of it Thank you Yes Hi, I think it's super cool that you made the transition from Coding to designing. So what do you what do you think the biggest advantage is to you as a UX designer of having coded before? I think you see it as an advantage. Yes, definitely I think I understand engineers And at the same time when we are designing certain things I can actually see what are the limitations or what could be difficult or when engineer come and say like Haitian This is not easy like changing this color. It's not easy. You might think it's is but it's not So I'm like, okay, okay, okay, let's let's let's probably prioritize this Yes, so I find that when when working with engineers it's become more easier easier because I understand it more And at the same time that way they can relate more to what I'm saying I'm saying like hey, this is really bad. This is going to affect the user. They're going to leave And then that's like it's easier to build trust Any other question? Are you ready for dinner? Hi, so Probably you're aware that there's very often a communication gap between designers and Coders, so what would be your recommendations? How the Designers can communicate their ideas better and Maybe how they can understand the reasons from that car coming from the coders better like how to bridge that gap So you're asking how do we to I solve that problem bridging the gap between me and the stakeholders? I see okay, so understand Make communicate so make sure that engineer understand why you want to make certain changes. Yes. Thank you for the question so This is what people told me you have to UX them Okay, so the way that they said is like you have to UX the dude all of them so Engineers understand things in a certain way right late when they you say something to understand Okay, this is going to take me three days. Why? And then you basically have to answer like okay user takes three hours to do this and we have one million user And it's three million hours So I think you're three hours worth it or you're three days worth it and it makes me. Oh, okay Or you can can just invite them into a usability session. They can see how frustrated it is and they're like, oh There's always like oh, okay. I just fix this. Let me fix it now Does that answer the question? Thank you 18 I'm not done So I wonder will you recommend designers to learn how to code? That's my first question My second well if you want to answer Would you recommend designer to code? Yeah, tough question. So my professor said never code Yeah, but what what's your take on it? I mean I think it depends on the organization it depends on the team dynamics I feel that having the skill to code is like learning a language you when you learn to code You learn the culture of the engineers too. So that in turns kind of make things smoother and easier for you to get to get along building product together But in in a team that doesn't have a lot of designer then designer should be focused that's because I have I feel like This is the way that we can best contribute there might be 10 engineers and just one designer. No, I got it I got it. I'm not saying switch roles. Just learn how to Oh, if you interest it then you should definitely my second question has to do with your transition because I did the same from design to engineering and back Oh nice round full circle. I'm just curious I'm just curious to know if like you ever thought about maybe I can come back someday Difficult question will my boss know Okay, maybe I say no for now Thank you. Thank you. Yes If you guys Have some times and you if you can write post it just the comments on what I did well what I did bad What I think you think I can improve and then just pace it somewhere where it wears a good place Place is pretty there. Yeah Yeah, this is my first talk to like a lot of people so I would love to hear your feedback Oh Okay Yes, so that that's it. Yeah, okay. Thank you very much guys. Please have a good holiday. Thank you