 Hi everyone. Thanks for joining us tonight for our panel on tech. This is the alumni career pathway series. I'm Sarah and I work in the alumni relations office. I'm really excited to introduce our panelists tonight and before I do that, I just want to acknowledge that we are hosting this panel on the unfeated territories of the Musqueam Squamish and Stela Nations. And right to my right is Jacqueline Phillips who is currently a senior AIX designer at Microsoft. Jacqueline's work focuses on creating inclusive, transparent, end-to-end experiences for users and collaborators alike. This has been achieved through a dedication and advocacy of human-centered design and holistic design mythologies. Over the past few years at Microsoft, Jacqueline has been working on building and scaling new design teams and AI-driven products while evangelizing her core design priorities across product groups at Microsoft. Jacqueline's current work can be experienced by a Microsoft syntax. In the center, I have Daniel. Daniel is currently a senior visual assistance designer at Dapper Labs, which is actually just across the way here. A digital collectible studio delivers blockchain memorabilia into the hands of sports biggest fans. As a systems designer, he thinks strategically on the application of visual narrative across multiple product brands from its marketing strategy in-product experiences and the product itself. Previously, he was a visual experience designer at Electronic Arts where he led back-of-box game feature designs for the NHL franchise over five product cycles. And on the far side, we have Alex. Alex has been working at Electronic Arts for two years as part of the editor framework team in Frostbite, the proprietary game engine. He has prior experience programming for VR and AR, and has collaborated with the basically good Media Lab and spotted phone productions to make a VR experience for Weedigo War. He graduated from the Center for Digital Media Program in 2020, his final project was a carnival full of AR and VR experiences. And for those who don't know, the CDM across the way is a co-conferred degree among MLA Car, EBC, SFU, and BCIT. So it's something that a lot of people go to from MLA Car afterwards. All right. And so first, I'm going to ask Jacqueline to talk a little bit about her current role and what she does, as well as the entry point into your career and what landed you in your career. Sure. Thank you. Thanks for the introduction. So my current role, as she mentioned, is I'm a senior product designer. I'm working on a new, it's an incubation team looking at ways that we can incorporate AI technologies to improve, sorry, I'm so not used to this microphone. We can basically improve the workflows of consumer or end users, business users that don't have a lot of technical expertise to have more efficient workflows. The entry point into my career, that was your second question. So I first got my job at Microsoft actually through an internship. I'd done between third and fourth year. It was pretty cool. I got to work on the HoloLens, which was kind of fun. And from there, I was able to interview for a full-time role. But before that, I was actually a flight attendant for six years. So you might be thinking that's a bit of a leap into pretty nerdy interaction design, not just interaction design, but pretty tech heavy interaction design. And it is. But I decided to attend Emily Carr thinking, well, I'd love to, I'd really, like I can't pour any more pop. If I pour one more can of pop, like I'll lose it. I'm going to, I'd love to be able to draw all day. Can you imagine if that was your job? I'm going to go study animation at Emily Carr. That's going to be, that's what I want to do. So I showed up and of course they have you try, you know, different disciplines you do design, you do media, you do visual art. And I was put in a design class my first year with Celeste. Was my first teacher, my first design teacher. And it was amazing. It totally blew me away. It was like all these things that I like, I didn't know design existed, but all these things that naturally make sense to me, I found in design. And then Celeste really helped me learn more about interaction design and find that fit. Was that the whole question? Thank you, Jacqueline. Same question for Daniel. Celeste terrified me, but she is a very sweet, sweet person. But just because I throw that out there. Yeah. So like Sara said, I am a visual systems designer at Dapper Labs. And what that means is that I pretty much take our overarching visual narrative. So we start off with style frames like pretty much just go full out and like graphic design, everything that could be exciting, super visual. And then what I do is I whittle it down to what could this brand be and how can we carry it across an entire product or different avenues of communication for our audiences. So it's very much strategic. You have to be very analytical and think about how sustainable the system could be. And as part of that, it's part of a larger team of the creative studio at Dapper Labs. So what we also do there is we launch brands. We have very large partnerships with the UFC, NFL, NBA, LaLiga, some other exciting leagues that we are going to be partnering up with in the future. And then we launch those and then we deliver it to everybody through NFTs. People do get very confused by how do sports deal with NFTs. So what we do is pretty much present to you or offer you the legal ownership of a very historic moment within a sporting event. It is pretty much yours to have you have purchased the license to it. It comes directly from the league. We presented to you in a very kind of like itemized digital form for you to keep on the blockchain. And like, you know, if you were to compare it to art in a physical sense, it accrues value over time based off of scarcity. It's value, it's verity, how just how present it is within, you know, the digital space. How did I get into this career? I don't know if I should go like way, way back. Okay, way, way back. This was completely on accident being in the digital space. I started off as an intern at the Vancouver Canucks. And my time there was ending. And unfortunately they didn't have the headcount for me to stay there. But I had a very supportive creative director there who asked me what I wanted to do later on with my career where I was headed. And Electronic Arts was actually a company that I wasn't fully going to apply for. I had the application all set, but I wasn't going to really follow through. But I had mentioned that to him. He talked to some people there who were who then became my bosses. And then he said, I think you should go for it. Sounds like it's right up your alley, just in terms of like what you value your experiences and everything like that. And then that happened. And then five years, five cycles, a lot of products and features, designs decided to switch it up. And Dapper at that time was very, Dapper in terms of the NFT space was still very new. They had just launched Top Shot, I believe one or two years before. And I thought I would give it a chance. And here I am. Thanks so much, Daniel and Alex. Sure. Yeah, so I'm going to start with how I got here. I am from Mexico. So I am not from around here. And I came here five years ago. But before that, I used to program cars, right? I didn't have anything to do with games or with visual effects or anything. But I really wanted to be in that space. I had studied my baccalaurs in animation engineering, which meant that I had drawn, I had figured out a 3D and how to do all of that. But also I got all of this engineering practice behind it. I got to program, I got to design machines and other things. So I was in Mexico and I couldn't find any jobs because my career was oriented towards games and graphical simulation. It was really hard to find a place that would take me that would make use of my talents. So then I ended up chancing just by pure luck finding a job programming cars. And I did that. And in that time, while I was doing that, I had already come to Canada for a few months through a program called Midax, which allows you to participate in research projects. So I came as an intern to the basically good media lab here at Emily Carr. I helped with their VR research. We made some performances with motion capture and VR. And it was really a formative experience for me. And I knew that I wanted to come back to all of this. So I applied to the Center for Digital Media while I was working in Mexico. And I got in. I luckily got a scholarship and was able to come here to study while also managing to work here at the basically good media lab with some of their projects. This allowed me to finish my degree in the master's degree. And then I couldn't find job again. So luckily what happened was that I was contacted by EA. And immediately they knew that this role that they had opened was the perfect match for me. And this is one of the things that I would like to tell you is that it's really important to tell people what you are actually good at, what you really want to do. So I knew from the career while I was doing my engineering degree that I wanted to do tools for artists. I really liked when I would see an artist and be like, hey, if you, if we move a little bit this, you will be like way faster doing this, right? Like you can press a button and this gets done, right? So I was really passionate about this and I put it everywhere. So it said it in my LinkedIn. I told it to everyone that I met different job first. And eventually this led to a recruiter noticing that, oh, this is the guy that is always going on about tools. And we need a tools guy. So this is the guy, right? And that's what led me all the way here. It's a lot of luck, but I think it's also how you prepare for that luck to happen. And my current job is doing tools for artists. So I work at Frostbite, which is the engine that artists use at EA to make different games. Like they do FIFA, which now is FC. They did a depth space remake. They did Need for Speed. They are doing skate and several others. And I get to interact with all of them and they tell me their problems and I just go and fix them for them, right? So if anyone needs like a tool, I am always there thinking about both the programming part and the UX design part. And also I, since I already knew how to do 3D and other things, I am familiar with what their workflows are. So this is really useful because I understand, oh, this person wants to do this. So maybe there's another path that the programming is telling me would be more efficient, right? So this is what I do now and I'm really happy at this place. Thank you so much. So I'm going to bring this back over to Jacqueline. What is a project you're working on right now that you're excited about? So I did mean to ask my manager about this. The thing that I'm most excited about right now, I'm going to have to dance around a little bit. But being able to work with emerging technologies, I find really interesting as a designer. Looking at things that don't have established patterns, established paradigms, I find really challenging. I really like the people that I get to work with on these kinds of problems. And I guess feeling a little bit uncomfortable that I don't have all the answers. And probably nobody here really does. But here are some ways that we can try to make progress and move forward and find the best possible outcome. And here are the ways that we're going to try to validate that and learn from this and set patterns and hopefully elevate each other and all grow while we produce these new experiences. So without getting into too many details about what specifically I'm working on, that's what makes me the most excited about coming to work and being able to make an impact in that way. Thank you, Jacqueline. Daniel? I will have to pay back off of what you said about not being able to say exactly what it is. The project right now, it's a very, so we partner with a lot of, I would say, like I said before, sports, but the next project that we're working on is completely unrelated to it. It deals with a lot of our sense of nostalgia is what I can say. But what makes me excited about is that the direction that we're headed in, it's very different in terms of my own visual eye, I would say. So it presents a huge challenge, especially when you have stayed in companies as long as I have and have established different visual identities, you can start to get pigeonholed and people can start to think, oh, you can only do this type of style, but when you're presented with something that's so out of your wheelhouse aesthetically, that's when you get to start to have fun and you start to, you know, do your research and you start to embody what you want to present from a narrative standpoint and also from a visual system standpoint. So that's what I'm most excited about is to be pushed to something that I'm not used to. Yep. So what I'm most excited about what I do every day, it's mostly finding all of these pain points and taking them away. I'm always really happy when we finally release a feature and it's like silence, right? Because before that every day it would be like a complain about this, a complain about it and then eventually everything is fixed, right? I'm really excited when these things happen. I work in the engine and that would be the project, but this project never ends. It's just a continuous moving forward, making it better, making it different, right? Because we service not only one team, right? We service several different teams. That's the difference between using something like Unity or Unreal, is that you actually know specifically which person is using your program. So you can do it tailor made so that what they are doing is the best instead of thinking about like, oh, what would normal users do? So that makes me really passionate about my work. Yeah, I think that's what I would say about it. Amazing. Thank you. I'm just going to circle back to Daniel and Jacqueline. Can you talk about something that you've recently completed that's public so that the students can learn just a little bit more about the type of products that you put out there? The most recent one. There's a lot. So I could go into the Dapper Lab side or the EA side because both kind of launched at the same time. So if anybody is familiar with NHL, I believe it was, they launched their latest product, which was NHL 23. So that was released this past September or October. Around that time, I had established that design system and that visual system a year beforehand. So right before I left Dapper Labs, that kind of gives you a context of how far ahead we have to think in terms of product design or when you're launching brands. It's pretty much a year. You have to be very present, but also forward thinking in how you establish just visually everything and making sure that it still resonates with everybody from a cultural standpoint and that it does take aim at what you try to accomplish. So a lot of that I had established and when I had left, that was during our pre-production cycle. So they're still establishing everything. And I had thought that, okay, they're probably going to throw away all the concepts that I had, but they stuck with it and that was very exciting. Yeah, I haven't actually seen into the product yet, but just to see that it had an impact just in terms of, okay, this resonates with the overall team, this resonates with leadership. This hits the touch points that they wanted internally and how they want to present themselves in the next cycle. I think that was huge for me. Thank you. And I realize I'm coming up with better answers as we go. So bear with me. I think, I mean, you've asked something that's released that I've worked on. AI Builder is an application that's part of the Power Platform at Microsoft. Probably haven't heard about that. It's not as familiar as like Word or Outlook, but it's a pretty big part of the business at this point and essentially lets business people make apps or there's Power Automate, you can make automations, Power Virtual Agents, which I worked on from basically when it was just a PowerPoint deck for it to execs through to release. Like that was pretty incredible. And I think I'm pretty, I'm pretty proud of the work that I did on that. Being able to create an interface for people to create a bot that doesn't require any coding. And it's not just a bot that's going to go back and forth, like take turns back and forth. It's a bot that uses natural language understanding. So creating something that, you know, a subject matter expert, so a customer service agent could make this themselves and the idea is, you know, automate the things that they don't want to be answering calls about. They don't want to keep answering what the store hours are again and again and again or what the location is again and again and again. And back to my better answer for the first question. I spend, like I think in school we spend a lot of time trying to find the perf, like what exactly the problem is, like be really clear about what the problem is, and then only when you are very confident do you move into solutioning and figuring out what the right, right, you know, remedy is. I don't always have that luxury, especially with this type of technology where they figured out something and they're like, okay, like we're productizing it. Here's the thing, like make it fit. And you're like, well, it doesn't totally fit like, you know, admin for a school that is dealing with all of these intake forms doesn't actually know how to train and create a model. But with some of the new advances that we, you know, you may have seen, there's so much more opportunity to find something that really does fit what a user's needs are and, you know, what their abilities are. And yeah, you inspired me with your answer that like being able to really solve a problem that people actually have, not quasi finding a fit. That's very satisfying. That makes me excited to do my work. Thank you. So looking back, what skills did you develop in school that you have found most important for your career? When I read this question, she sent the questions to us. When I read this question, I was trying to think of like, is there one skill like, if you don't know how to do prototyping, you're not going to cut it in this world. And it's not, it's not, that's not really the case. Like the methodologies and the tools are always evolving and you can't be that prescriptive with any one particular thing. It's always going to be situation dependent. And I think that's what I've, that's actually the skill that I've learned here is critical thinking. And it might, it might not have been in my interaction design class. Like, there was a class with Julian Dreyev that was really like critical theory of technology, which isn't one to one with what I'm doing now, but being able to take a step back and take a broader perspective on what exactly you're doing is invaluable. And the other thing I was thinking of is the time that I spent in the health design lab here with Kaylee Rabber. So having a more service design approach, a design research approach to a problem, again, being able to step back and say, okay, I know that we all think we really need to do this one thing. But this is the technical implementation model. This has nothing to do with how people are going to perceive this technology or this experience. So having the confidence and the wherewithal to initiate these discussions and having the grace to lead your partners and your colleagues through that thinking is what I'd say is the most valuable. Are we taking? We're going to be taking questions at the end. If you, if you can hold it, that would be wonderful. Thanks, Daniel. Again, I will echo what you said about critical thinking, because I've had this conversation with a lot of co-workers that you can teach people how to do things. It's like those types of skills, like soft skills or technical skills, you can teach people how to do that. And a lot of times you will learn that on the job. But what I've realized, it's you can't teach people how to think. You can start to, you know, yeah, well, but not everybody knows that. I think that's what makes it so unique is that here they really teach you how to critically think and think about intentional design, like, especially with visual design, you can be, you know, you can kind of just, a lot of people can just say, I did it because I did it. And then that, that's the end of the conversation. But when you're thinking about visual design within tech or within any sort of platform, you have to be very intentional with how you approach it. Like, why did I make this decision? How is this going to resonate with our audience? Like the color, like blue, isn't just color blue because you chose it. And that's what's trendy right now. There is a thought process behind it. You do have to think about how people will perceive it. And also you have to think about accessibility as well. All your, you know, the visual systems that you set up, you have to think about how the user will interpret it. And that's when, you know, UX comes into play. And then you start to ask some questions, maybe about your designs, whether it be from visual interaction, how that works. So I think critical thinking, because, yeah, you just, it's just something that will push your design forward and will make everything more intentional and it'll make it more purposeful for yourselves and your design team. If you begin to lead one or if you become part of one, or even if you're freelancing as well. Well, first of all, I don't know if you can help me with this. I want to ask how many people we have that are technical and how many are that are designers, kind of to gauge where I should go with this? Yeah, they can raise their hands. Do you program more or do you design more? Design? Research? Okay, okay. Well, then I'll go for design suggestions. So, yeah, I've done a little bit of a lot of different things. Most of it programming, but a lot of programming that they don't tell you is design, right? And a lot of designers also tend to not know much programming, right? So what I found really important is understanding both words a little bit. It's really crucial when consolidating a solution, right? So you have a problem and you know that as a designer, the user would like to do things kind of like this, kind of like that, but then you go to your programmer and your programmer tells you, no, but that would be really complicated to do, right? And some designers are like, no, but that's how it has to be. But then once you see how the code is made, you realize that you've just ordered a six month effort into rewriting the whole code base. So it's really important to know how to negotiate these things between teams, between people. And for that, some level of understanding of what makes a program, what makes a structure of a program is important. Not so much the code, but the structure. That is a really important skill that I developed. And then later on in my career when I was at CDM, we did a lot of work with multidisciplinary teams. And I would have to be this nexus between what the programmer required and the animator was making, right? Like, oh, we need this format or we need these things. Then I would figure out, okay, the best format for inputting in the game is going to be this one, right? And those sorts of things are things that you usually don't think about it until you are in the situation. But that is important that you think about it, about learning them while you're in school or during your practice, I think. Amazing. Thank you. So this one's a little bit of a multi-part question, which is why you all have your question sheets in front of you to remind you. What is essential for people to bring with them as a skill set when trying to break into your particular industry? What made you stand out to employers and what type of assets did you include to help you stand out in your portfolio? So, again, it's not going to be something that's so black and white of, you know, if you do this one thing, if your portfolio is just good enough, then you'll get there. I think that you need to be obviously have a certain level of competence and proficiency in what you're doing. You'll gain that through your studies and through experience. It's definitely, the hardest part is definitely getting your first position. So, I mean, maybe the most beneficial skill at first is going to be your networking. Being able to finagle your way into that first experience. My first internship was not at Microsoft. It was pretty brutal. It was like super long days. There were some questionable sides to it, but I did end up learning a lot. And it was something that I could speak to. This is real experience that I have. And subsequently taking research assistant positions saying, this is a real hospital that I worked with. These are real projects that demonstrates that you're able to work with others. The things that you're describing, you're able to get along with non-designers. You can operate in a non-ideal state, which I think is some of the assumptions that we have about school projects. So having that type of evidence to your competency. And then secondly, being able to tell the story about why you do have what it takes, why you are a fit. Being able to communicate that successfully is what's going to get you over the finish line. But I think that first internship or that first job, it takes a bit of scrappy, putting yourself out there. I think I might have sent, I think I kept a spreadsheet once when I was sick and when I was applying for my first internship. And I might have sent 70. And I asked all of my teachers, do you have friends in the industry who you might be able to introduce me to to get an internship? And that's actually how I ended up getting that first maybe questionable internship. Oh, sorry, there was more to that question, isn't there? What's essential? What made you stand out to a player? I mean, I've been told it was my storytelling, my conviction, my passion. I get pretty into my projects. So being able to, yeah, again, go back to the storytelling, having that in your tool belt, which I assume it is. I think people are there's probably still a lot of emphasis on presentations and storytelling here. I think that'll serve you very well. Thanks, Jacqueline. What is essential? I can echoing what you said, but I will add on, I think it's very important that as emerging designers, you do, you do some inner reflection on what your values are and what you do look for in the work environment that you want to situate yourself in. Because I think that that will be what pretty much guides you to where you want to apply. Of course, not everybody has that, you know, that luxury of picking and choosing. I definitely didn't. And I, when I was applying to places, I was very picky because I knew what I could do and I knew what value I added, but it's just getting into the door and getting people to listen to you. And once you get into the door, you have to be able to communicate what you value, what is why you're doing what you're doing, and how that aligns with where you want to situate yourself in. And I think the ability to communicate that and also telling the story, you know, once again to the progression of like presenting your work, that all, you know, goes back to just communication and establishing your values and also I think trying to keep yourself humble because everybody does have to start somewhere like I get. I also kept a spreadsheet of every word that I applied and it is, that is not a fun kind of exercise to do for yourself, but you do have to do it because I think the hardest part is getting your fucking to the door. What made you stand out to employers? I think also the ability to tell a story because this is kind of a mindset that I still have now when it comes to portfolios and how you present yourself and how you tell that narrative, you know, I think at that time, I still vouch for PDF portfolios because I think you have the ability to control your own narrative. You force whoever's looking at your portfolio to read it a certain way and you control the narrative, you control the pacing and when you go into that room and you present it, you know everything that's in there. At least I would hope you know everything that's in there and you're able to control the conversation in that way. So I would hope that that is what made me stand out to employers. It has worked so far. But yeah, and what types of assets did you include in your portfolio? Like not everything. I originally thought that I would go into print publication design so I worked on a lot of, you know, I did the woo, I art directed woo like way back. So that was a huge thing. I did, you know, gallery design for the student exchange program and really showed the breadth of how that applied within a space. I did other wayfinding projects when I was in on student exchange and really understood how to format a portfolio that way. I can go into deeper detail, but there is kind of like a trick on how to do it. And if you are like, if you understand publication design and how to set out a narrative, it really works to your advantage that way. Thank you, Daniel. Yeah, yeah, everything you said about the portfolio, I think it's really important. My portfolio was a little bit messy, to be honest. But I did find that being able to tell your story and tell it to as many people as you can is really important. Because once you know what you're about and you can express it and people can understand it, then it's easier for them to think of you when they need you, right? This happened multiple times. Like I only was able to come back to basically good media lab because the first time I was around, they knew what I could do, right? And that led me into CDM and all of this. The same thing happened with EA, right? I tried to apply it to a lot of different places, but that one that finally got me in was just telling everyone that I want to do tools, right? So then somebody was like, we need tools, get him in. Like the biggest skill set that is, I don't think it's the most important one, but it's really vital that you practice this, is when you go to a company, show that you belong there, right? So for example, if you go to a place that wears Susan tie, you want to show up wearing a suit and a tie, right? I tell this because I have had a lot of experience helping out in the recruitment front for my team. And we see some people that come sometimes really relaxed or really, like they wouldn't be a good fit for the team, really familiar or different things. And then that makes them lesser candidates. And it's really sad to me to see people that can tell these stories and stuff, not figure out the vibe of the place before. So for this, another thing that you can do is reach out to whoever is in the team before your interview. I think if you can ask them a few questions or something, the worst thing they can do is don't tell you anything, right? But I found it really useful to talk to people that work at the organization to understand what the vibe is, what they actually do there, how they lead their days. And if I would be a good fit, right? So that I don't make them lose their time. And also I get more chances to get in there. For my portfolio, it was really coding-centric, but I also showed a lot of my technical artist kind of area. So I showed some of my AR projects, some models, I showed some Unity projects, and I also wanted to show that I understood what game engines were. So right before the interview for like two weeks, I just grabbed a book about how to make a game engine and how to make ray tracing and just copied the code, right? I copied the code, modified it, and figured out how it worked so that I could show like, hey, I did this little program, it's like a mini game engine, right? And I could talk about it with them because this is what they do every day. So that helped me a lot, I think, from a portfolio. Yeah, it's a little bit uncommon, but you can bring it up in the interview, like that you understand the work that they do there. Thank you. And where does technology and art or design mix in the company that you work for? So I work for a technology company, software company, so it's really in the fabric of everything that I'm doing. I wish I could say there was maybe a little bit of space sometimes, a little reprieve away from the screens and technology. It's really in everything that we're in everything that I'm doing. Even in the production model or the way teams are grouped to build things, you of course have a design team, you probably have a design team that you're working on, but if you're producing a feature, set a feature work, you're going to be with an engineer, a PM, probably one PM, probably four engineers, maybe there's one that goes to all the meetings, but that's your team while you're working. So I might be the design advocate or representative. My partners are engineers and even the PMs, I would say are quite technical. Microsoft is a very engineering first company. Thank you. Where does it sit? I think I would love to say that everything that you come up with from a visual standpoint from your mock-up will get implemented. It will not. A lot of the times you will have to make compromises, but I think where technology plays into it is that you, as a designer, have to be able to understand the constraints that you find yourself in based off of the technology that you have and how software engineers might either be fixing a pre-existing widget or something else within the product or you're starting off from something new or if there's a strategy to fix something that your design might be able to fix or presents an opportunity to fix, you really have to work closely with your software engineers. For me, while I was at EA, they're my best friends. I would present them something and the thing that I would always say instead of getting shut down because sometimes it will straight up just shut you down and be like, we're not doing that. I will just be like, okay, what are the options? So it starts a conversation. What are the options? How can we go about this? What can I improve in my design? So it does fit within the pre-existing technology that we have right now or are we trying to fix something underneath it all and then will this present an opportunity to do that in the terms of tech debt, anything like that? So I would say it informs the end product and you really have to work closely with your engineers, people who might work in 3D environments, understanding how your design might influence what they're doing or what they're doing might influence your end product, especially at EA. While I was there, you really had to talk to everyone just to understand what was going on and to start to speak their language so there's better communication happening. And even at Dapper Labs, everything that we do, it's a very global company. We have partners like in Australia or other places out the world. Language barriers are like a huge thing. So I think as long as you communicate properly or the best to your ability, it'll really benefit you in terms of that type of collaboration. Yeah, exactly as you said, I think that is exactly the point. Where art and technology mix in this industry, but like I am going to go a little bit more specific about kind of like in my area, right? So in my area, we have a UX team, like one UX team, right? And we have like so many engineering teams. So then we have to share this one UX team. What happens is that you have to be mindful of them because yeah, you want to give them sometimes like the feature you're working on, they won't have time to go through it in detail. So you want to get some knowledge of UX design so that what you present to them is already refined. So they can just go, oh, this detail, this detail, this detail, instead of going like explaining how UX design works. This is very specific if you are programming and you are in this situation. Other than that, I just talk to users, which are artists often and I just have to understand their workflows. Like, oh, we want to do this part where the experience is following this curve, right? And then you have to think with them, like from the other side, that you were saying about being your best friends with your programmers. Like as a programmer, I try to be the best friend to my designer and artists. Thank you. So we've already touched a little bit on cross departmental collaboration. And I just wanted to know if you have any advice or useful tactics for communicating your ideas for a variety of different positions. Yes. There's actually, so there's a bias called false consensus. And it's where you, I might have mentioned it earlier, but it's where you believe what you and the group have figured out is shared by the same as everybody outside of your group. So when I'm working on a team with a lot of engineers, data scientists, PMs, who used to be engineers, and they are really excited about the way that we want to solve some problem. But it's not actually making sense for our users. I think that my role becomes a lot more of, it shifts away from producing an artifact or a tangible design. And it moves into what I would describe as design leadership, where you're spending your time, your energy enrolling others in your way of thinking and your problem finding. But also, as you guys have mentioned, you're taking the time to really understand their point of view. So is it that they came across this technical model of the way this thing works and that they haven't pushed further, or are there other motivations that are causing them to really think that this way forward is all that? So yeah, design leadership. And to me, that goes back to any number of different methodologies, storytelling. You could try your design research methods on your partners, maybe to varying degrees of success. The most successful, I might say, is the classic interview techniques. If you're able to really listen and understand where your partners are coming from, I think that's going to take you further than maybe getting everybody in the room to do a workshop. It depends on the group. But I'd encourage you to take the time to really understand where your peers are coming from, and then enroll them, not just in, oh, here's my answer, and this is why I think we should do it, but actually bring them along with your problem finding process. Like, okay, I see you've started with this. Let's flesh this out. Let's put this across like user flow and see if this actually makes sense. I think getting that enrollment early on will go a lot further in having any kind of influence or impact with your ideas. Great. Thanks, Jacqueline. Communicating your ideas. I think Gage, obviously you have to gauge who is in your audience. I've done presentations where an entire product team, like 150 people, have been in there. There's no way for me to properly answer all their questions at one time. I think it goes back to your ability to storytell and also keeping in mind what are the goals with your concept? What are they trying to achieve, or what are they trying to solve? Because I think at the beginning of any pre-production stage, your leadership is going to outline what the goals are for that production cycle. What do they want to achieve? And I think at least from a visual standpoint, we always return back to the product pillars and working with our creative director as to what exactly that is and how it relates back to what our leadership wants to accomplish and how it works within their own goals. And also, I think there's, again, going back to there's going to be a lot of people in the audience depending on where you find yourself presenting. So I think the ability to storytell and also give them the details without getting too wishy-washy with like, oh, we did this because we felt that you're getting into the very artistic kind of explanation of everything. And they're not necessarily going to care about your artistic explanation all the time. You're going to be talking to engineers who might be seeing your mock-ups and they're going to immediately go into like, okay, this is not going to work. This is how we might solve this problem. They might be already going into how are we going to implement this or going to talk to QV or QA quality assurance that they might honestly just be looking at cool visuals at that point. Or they might be making notes until like, okay, we need to make sure that all these points that are being presented to us meet the quality that we are expecting and they start to grade everything as well. So I think, I don't know if this really answered a question, but I think your ability to storytelling give the enough information that you know that people will care about it without having to necessarily, you know, necessarily go into the nitty gritty of, you know, your internal design team. I think that is a way to communicate with the answer I gave is does not help. But I think it definitely goes back to if you know your content and you know your designs and you know everything, it'll just flow out of you when you present it in a much larger audience. So basically the program at CDM is all about teaching you how to talk to other disciplines. So I find this like a really broad question. I try to be brief, but like the first thing that I would say as a programmer is that prototype is always the best communication you can have because you show it to your user or you show it to your UX designer and they can tell you what happens if I click this and what happens if I move this, right? And then you can answer those questions and maybe you find out, oh, that is a problem. Oh, I didn't see it before, right? And that's usually how I like to do things. Like this is kind of like a style that I got from working on rapid prototyping environments and I would do documentation that is like drawings and posted notes and things like that. Other engineers work a little bit more abstractly, more into the code, more into awards and requirement lists, but I would also tell you to develop into that area if you come from the prototype, right? Because sometimes you have the prototype and you showed it and you have all of that, but then the programmer is going to go and program and then they want to check if everything is there, right? So making requirements lists and all of these basic developing tools that are taught usually to computer science people, it's also really important when you are working in a digital project as a designer. For communicating with PMs and with your manager, I would say that openness is really important. Be straightforward with what you want, what you expect from your work, from the future, and for where you want to go with your career. Because they may be the right person to help you, that to recommend you what to learn to achieve those, right? That is the purpose of a manager, is to make your job easier and to make you grow as an employee. Great, thank you. So I have one last question and then we'll open the floor for questions from the audience. What has helped you get to where you are in your career and what advice would you have for someone looking to follow in your footsteps? I touched on this a little bit earlier, but I think getting involved with the community and looking for opportunities through people, not just postings. If I consider my experience as an end of one experiment, I started out sending maybe a hundred applications I'd send to whatever caught my eye, but in the end it's through relationships and connections. Even though I've been at Microsoft for several years, I do have experience with, you know, there have been times where I've switched teams where I've maybe also considered roles outside of Microsoft and in any of those explorations. Even if I don't know anyone at the company, I'll find who the hiring manager is. You can figure this out. It's pretty easy to find and reach out to that person, reach out to the people on the team so that you can learn more about what the expectations are, how you can be successful, but also to avoid any potential grief. This might be a team that you actually don't want to put your energy into. Interviewing is not an insignificant process as a designer. There's a lot of labor. It's not something that you want to go through only to meet the team and realize that the culture is not really one that aligns to your values. So as convenient as it would be to just send off your resume and get a call back and that's your journey. I think a lot of the time you're throwing your resume into a big digital pile of resumes and taking the time to actually go through the recruiter or the hiring manager starting with a coffee chat and don't be fooled. The coffee chat is not just a coffee chat. It's your first interview. That's going to get you a lot further. Oh, and I would apply for jobs outside of Vancouver. Even if you live here, you can still get offers in New York, in Europe, you can avoid some of the discrepancies in the standard salaries in Vancouver, but also open up your pool of potential jobs. Yeah. When I was first starting off, I didn't do the networking. Networking is not my huge forte, I would say. But that's something that I wished I did was to keep tabs on people within the community. I am very fortunate that my form of networking happened to be a result of people that I had previously worked with who have moved on to different opportunities themselves. I might have stayed in their mind in terms of a certain role or they want to revisit that type of working relationship that we had. I was very lucky in a lot of my opportunities was that I had a lot of space for experimentation and to hone my skills and hone my eyes, whether it be at the Vancouver Canucks that I think everybody should do an internship because once you leave school, you really do not know what an actual working environment is at that stage. I would highly suggest doing an internship because it exposes you to so much and if you are surrounded by the right leaders and the right mentors within that internship or your own emerging design practice, that will help you a lot because it will start to form if you aren't able to necessarily form your values at that certain point. It will either teach you what you do value or what you don't value in a company that you want to work with. I think, yeah, great mentorship. I had a lot of people who vouched for myself. Like I said, very early on when I introduced myself, my creative director at the Vancouver Canucks, he was really great. He loved his design team and everything. He always vouched for everybody. Same with my two design leads at EA. They always vouched for me. I was the most junior designer after an internship and they really helped me hone my process, my skill. They allowed me to experiment with any design that came my way and I always made sure to make myself available to any opportunities that they might have to expand into game features, things like that. Then even when I told them that I was leaving, they were able to vouch for me because we had established a really great relationship that way just in terms of working together and things like that. Great. Thanks, Daniel. Well, my experience is a little bit non-standard, I feel. I've never gotten a job by just giving my resume and that's it. I did a lot of networking, but I barely got networks. But I'll tell you what I did for networking. I think it was really helpful to understand what the industry was. I found meetups of professionals, like I think the pipeline developers meetup here in Vancouver. I would just go, just listen to them, listen to what their day-to-day was, what problems they were trying to solve. It's like a meetup where several people from different companies just come together and just talk about like, oh, we're dealing with these pipeline problems for our VFX artists. I wanted to get into something where I could help artists. It didn't matter if it was games, it didn't matter if it was VFX. I was going to every VFX conference I could, every game conference I could, I would just be there. Just figuring out what these people were about. Yeah, it just happened to be found by recruiters because I just kept telling everyone and everything about tools, but they found LinkedIn. So it wasn't really so much the network that held there. Then for resumés, I just happened to stumble with people that needed people and I happened to be around and I was like, yeah, I know how to do this. And they were like, oh, great. But I still think that networking and talking to a lot of people, making a lot of friends, is really a great way to learn about the career environment that you want to get into. Also, I recommend going through the postings in different companies that you're interested of and don't go to that junior positions. Go to the senior positions and read them because those ones will tell you what they expect you to learn to work into that position more often than not. You will see more requests for specific technology. You will see more requests for like, oh, we use C++ in this company and we use dependency injection, for example. And then these things will not usually come in the junior position posting, but they will come in the senior position posting. So that's also another thing that I really recommend. What else could I recommend? Try to do mock interviews with your friends. Just get the nerves out of that. They will tell you if something sounds kind of weird. If you're giving too much information or things like that, that usually helps a lot as well. Thank you. Do you remember your question? Fantastic. It's just so the people online can hear. Okay. The question to the girl, I didn't know the name because I was late, sorry. Do you work in software for like hospital administration or for actually like health analysis? Because you said that you work for healthcare. Oh, while I was at Emily Carr, I worked for the Health Design Lab as a research assistant. And so this was with BC Children's Hospital. It was one project, one was with Blue Cottage. And I'm trying to think if there was another one. Was it just Blue Cottage? Maybe Blue Cottage and BC Children's Hospital, but I don't work in healthcare now. I work at Microsoft. It would be fun to work in healthcare, but I don't. I think he has follow-up questions from someone else with questions. It's on. You don't have to do anything. I just want to ask, I'm studying industrial design right now. And I was just wondering, because for example, Microsoft or any other company, they're all working in mostly what we see is electronics and gadgets and all of that stuff. And I just wanted to ask, how do, I mean, I realize that you guys are in interaction and UI, UX and all that, but how do we get into that stuff? Because we don't learn that here in our course. We are mostly working with furniture and wood and all that other stuff, but there's so many things that are possible in industrial design, which are more prominent in the industry. But right now, it's kind of difficult to try to figure out how to get into those. How do we start with that? So I mean, I realize in our industry, but if you could say something about that. Yeah. At Microsoft, unfortunately, there are less and less hardware design, like they would call it hardware design. So that might be a good keyword to start searching. I know that there are, there's a lot of work in computer aided design. If you, I also seen several industrial designers go into the game industry because of the 3D modeling side. So these guys might have some, these guys might have more tips for you than I do. But yeah, Microsoft, unfortunately, the investment in hardware is not as big as software. Not to say you shouldn't try those still. In terms of gaming, I mean, there's a whole side of accessibility that you look into. So at EA, we were doing a lot of, I forget what they're like, they're like game jams where, you know, you can sign up for a hack of funds. I don't know why I call it game jams, but where there's a lot of opportunities, especially out, it doesn't have to be through EA. It happens everywhere. But where they try to improve the accessibility of controllers for those who want to participate in gaming. And, you know, accessibility is such a huge part in tech now. And I think it should be. I mean, there's a designated officer for accessibility. And they're always looking for ways to improve the actual hardware. So it aligns with, you know, aligns with letting everybody enjoy the game. And also, like you said, 3D modeling as well, like Fort Dapper Labs, like all of that, it might be presented as digital, but, you know, you have to think in a very 3D mindset. And also with VR, I have a friend who works on the Pokemon Go game. And all of that is VR as well. Or, you know, working with 3D environments, our character designs, things like that. You know, we have vanity, we had, yeah, we have vanity clothing. If you want to get into clothing design, because you can do anything, because you don't have to have it actually made. It's all existing in a digital space. So I think, yeah, I think in terms of like digital entertainment, there's a huge opportunity for those in industrial design. Or if you want to, I have a lot of friends who move from industrial design into UX and UI. So it's super easy. Or just like finding the opportunities and the educational courses, if that's what you want to go with. Yeah. So. On a design software, like, do you want to design software or you'd like to design something like this microphone? So that was my follow up question. Because, I mean, I got into industrial design because, you know, I really like working with physical materials, definitely. But I definitely am interested in, you know, the UI UX aspect of design as well. Which is, and my question was, you know, with industrial design as my, like, done that for undergrad, how do I get into that, you know, UI UX hardware study, UI UX after this? Well, so a little bit from my unconventional working history. So car programming. I don't know if you've thought about vehicle design, because this is an area, for example, the dashboards, right? These have to be designed both physically and digitally, right? And there's a lot, there's a lot of interesting things in vehicle design that I think would fit if you are looking for this interaction between the digital and the physical. I think that's a really great place to go. I used to work with a lot of people doing this kind of design. I used to do dashboards, and I would program them and make sure that they work. And someone else was doing, like, the industrial design around them, like the casing, like where it's going in the car and everything. So that is, that is an opportunity. But regarding, like, learning about UX and going a little bit more digital from your fabrication, I think that there's some possibility for going a self-learning route with this. This is like, honestly, I learned the basics of programming during my bachelor's degree, and everything else I learned on my own, right? And now I am an software engineer, right? So I think that there's a lot of opportunity to learn, self-learn digital stuff, like the fabrication one, I think it's more valuable to learn it in an institution. I also think I had done this workshop, I forget what it's called, but Lookup Human-Centered Interaction. So again, that you don't have to come from a design background. When I did that workshop, we had people who came from TransLink who might be accountants or they might be leads of something completely out of design. So I think, yeah, Lookup Human-Centered Interaction get familiar with it, like the people who I had done the workshop with, they don't have any design background and also things like Brainstation, those academies that you see like in Gastown, those are there for you as well, if you want like a very long term certification as well. But there's definitely a lot of workshops that happen over a weekend that you can participate in. I'll tell you. You do a direction design in your fourth year too. Oh, right. I will look at what Bosch and Bombardier do also, Bosch and Bombardier. There's a lot of companies that I think you will like looking at. Yeah, this one, I think. Hello. My question is, okay, first of all, I was just going to mention that actually Emile Carr has a UX program, Continued Studies. That's another thing you can look at, which I am attending. I have a background in architecture and 3D animation and I've worked for about eight years in that field. I am transitioning into UX design and that leads to my question. How easy is, because I was intrigued by the idea that you left, you know, one type of career hospitality and found a path in UX design. How were you able to navigate the experience and the skills? You may have learned background in architecture, 3D animation and all that and then applied, especially when you're trying to get a job. So my flight attendant experience, it was hard because I spent my whole career up until this point in the aviation industry, like learning to fly, being a flight attendant, working at Harbor Air, like I had this whole life. I actually didn't put it on my resume at all. It's something that I'll mention sometimes as like a wacky thing about me, but I don't actually include that even. Although I will say that it has, I think it has given me an advantage, just like your architecture experience. I mean, you should put that on your resume for sure. It's not exactly the same, but that's experience that you have. That is design experience that's going to be super valuable. And, you know, being a flight attendant seems worlds apart, but it's problem solving for people. You get to know people really, really well. And I think that's like a bit of, that's an advantage and that's experience that I have that puts me years ahead of where I would be with just my degree. The same will be true for you. And this is a very popular, recognized background architecture. I think people will be very impressed. Was there another question? Was there a second part to the question or that was it? No. Okay. Thank you. Hi. So my question was, an immigrant to Canada recently, graduate student from interaction design last year, how do you transfer this experience that you mentioned, which are really hard to put down on a CV? In CV, they're looking at metrics, what you achieved and what skill sets you in, but the soft skills, which you said you picked up from HDL, I picked up from working in social innovation projects, working for nonprofits, the soft skills that you do when you do interviews, when you do workshops, that you pick up, how do you transfer it to a piece of paper for you to get into that first round of interview for your employer? And the second part was when I look at job postings, they always use these terms interchangeably, UI, UX design, they sometimes plug it together. Sometimes it's UI design, sometimes it's UX design, user researcher. And while I'm looking for something very specific, how do you put yourself in that little box to fit into that particular job profile that you're asking? You can do that, but you can do much more. I'm looking at it from a graduate level perspective after you have finished your masters. Okay. Well, the first thing you're mentioning about putting it on paper for your resume. So the first thing I recommend about this and the thing that I've seen most people that I have referred or that I interviewed that have done is that they know how to think from the recruiter's perspective, right? So you know that nowadays people get inundated with resumes. And there are also like all these automatized systems in the middle of them. So if you learn how to read the posting and how to identify those keywords and translate it into your resume, without lying, of course, right? But like showing that you actually read the posting and that the keywords are there, like mostly in that same way that is there, it will get you to the next round, right? Where then someone might be able to see it and then your storytelling ability will be able to tell them, oh, this person has these qualifications straight away, right? So you want to tell them that you are the best fit for the job because you have the key thing that in their posting they are looking for. That is my experience with dealing with resumes. Yeah. I think contextualizing everything. I think like what you said with your career in hospitality, that's problem solving and then that feeds into UX. And I think that it's going to be very annoying. But it is very necessary in your resume that you do have to cater it towards the company and the position that you're working towards. So being able to really reflect on your experience and then contextualize it and make those connections with where you want to apply to or where you hopefully apply to, I think that's very important. And then that does go into the storytelling and that does reveal to the recruiter or whoever the hiring manager might be is that, okay, they might not have the most direct experience in that field, but they do have experience in terms of problem solving or I can't think of anything else, but problem solving, but making those connections and contextualizing everything. So it shows that you do add a value to that team and it does fill the holes that they need to fill. I'll just add one thing. I think of the whole hiring process as a UX problem. So what does the resume actually have to do? The first step, who's going to be looking at it? A recruiter do your soft skills really matter at that point? Like I make my resume. I imagine that they have a checklist of things that they're looking for on the resume and I make my resume do that. Then you're going to have your screener with a recruiter. That's when your soft skills come through. That's not something you have to put on your resume. Once you get that hook, if you do have all those soft skills, then you'll be set. Once you get into your interviewing and your portfolio, that's all going to come through. That's what those things are for. That screener call is going to be to see how are you able to carry a conversation with me? Are we hitting it off? Are things going okay? It's very bias laden, but that's where your soft skills are really going to shine. So for example, I think that everyone heard about the imposter syndrome and how do you overcome it? Do you have any tips for it? For example, because I work in a startup right now and I always look for validation from CEOs, software engineers and stuff like that. I really want to prove my design is right. Maybe you have any tips or it just gains with the time with your experience? Yeah. I think that you've asked two questions. One about self-advocacy, being able to promote your work. Honestly, what I typically do is I take a bit of almost an education, like an educator approach. There was a really impactful article that I remember I had to read in school and it was called Design When Everybody Designs. So when everybody on your product team, maybe it's engineering, maybe it's the founder, all these people, they think that they know exactly what you should be doing and here you are. You're like, well, maybe I don't have that much experience, but you are still the designer. So rather than I think trying to assert yourself, being able to explain where you are getting that reasoning from, there is a reason that you did make that decision and that you did make that suggestion and it can be hard to articulate those things. But knowing that, okay, here's an example. There's a PM who said, why is the line length this short on the modal? It's supposed to be across the whole top. That's obviously a design bug. I'm assigning it to Jacqueline. You have to fix it. Like, well, listen everyone, there's this amazing research about line length and cognition that when you actually keep it shorter, it's a lot easier to read. So this is actually by design. People are like, wow, I never knew that. Think of the newspaper. So having a little bit of patience to actually bring people in on your decision-making process, it's not necessarily that like, hey, I don't think that you know what you're doing. It's probably from a place of lack of understanding. Yeah, and I know sometimes it's difficult to talk to people, especially if they are above you, if you are going to present your boss or something, and you feel like you cannot contradict them. At the end of the day, the best thing that you can do is tell the truth. I did this for a reason and you explain it calmly. It's difficult even if you know that you have to do that and everything. So the thing that always gets me through this is kind of that I used to do public speaking. It gave me the ability to stand before a crowd or before someone that I'm kind of afraid to talk to. I'm not going to be comfortable in this situation, but I'm going to try anyways. And if I bump, I bump. And I think most bosses or people that are above you are oftentimes like accommodating and understand like, oh, maybe if you did a mistake, they will let you know, right? Because in the end, what the team wants is not for the boss to impose their their voice, right? And if they want that, that's a really bad job. So what they actually want is to get the best product possible. And if you're still working towards that, then they will accept your suggestion or correct your suggestion if it's wrong. Well, is it still about the imposter syndrome? Okay, we have time for one more question after Daniel answers about this. I think to echo everything that you guys have said about the communication and taking an educational standpoint when you're explaining your concepts to continue on with the imposter syndrome, that is, I think you get over that very quickly. Like you do have to do a gut check with yourself that you were hired for a reason. The people see the potential in you and that I think people do doubt themselves a lot, but you do have to remember if you really do have to hype yourself up and be like, okay, I'm here for a reason. They hired me. They you were wanted or continue to be wanted in that design team. And it comes with time and your confidence will grow as you do continue to work and you do continue to see that people might be agreeing with you or they might be latching on to something that you might be saying or you know, you might be educating in a way that people understand what you're saying. But yeah, I think the imposter syndrome, even I'm like how many years into my career and every time I start a new project from scratch, it's like, I don't know what the hell is going on right now, but you get over it once you get through those rounds of approvals and things like that. One last one last thing. I'm realizing that I don't necessarily feel a lot of imposter syndrome because I think people underestimate more than me more than they overestimate me. And I think that happens with design a lot. So you might feel once you as you as you get going that people still don't really understand design that well. And that people like you might start realizing that actually I'm being underestimated here. I have a lot of value to deliver. And I need to explain that. So we'll do the one last question, but don't just say because there's actually half an hour where you can actually chat with our panelists one on one and start that whole networking process and have some snacks. So if you didn't get that last question answered, there's going to still be time just not on the mic. Yeah, but I think this question will be interesting to all of us if it's okay. So my question is how to do it, the process of, you know, your workflow. And when you're working to create a product, what is the level of fidelity you have to produce? And then the research that goes behind it. Case in point, you have you're designing a dashboard, right? Do you stop at a mock up? Or does the design do you would you want the designer to actually show the interactivity of the panels or maybe the car how it rotates and all that? Or you're designing a software, how deep do you have to go in terms of conveying your design to the developer? And to what point is enough? Let me put it that way. It varies from team to team. It varies on who that person you're talking to is. Some people really like it drill down. Some people really like it overview only. And it depends how you work, because some teams will go the rapid prototyping route, like just get that code fast and then test it and then make it better. And then it approaches the design with more and more, but there are changes done to the design, right? So then it's easier to steer achieve that is like starting to be built instead of steering like a whole built thing, right? So yeah, failing fast, I think it's usually how I like it, but it depends on how your team works. I think how far you want to get through it. I think you do have to think about the journey that you are thinking about for your users. So if we're talking about prototype, as you create your concept or your prototype, you will start to think about what the end goal is for the user. And you would typically cater towards how you want to navigate them through your prototype is. And then you'll add a little bit more here and there, just in case there's some area of exploration that might, while you're testing it, a user might get into. But I think when you are prototyping and you're testing it, there is a lot when it comes to the UXRs that it is guided to a degree. It's like, okay, how might you get from point A to point Z or point J or whatever? So there is some guiding and that's when you kind of know when to do one segment, especially when it comes to feature development. There's so many, you can be designing thousands of screens or something like that. And you can't create a prototype that covers all of that. So you do have to consider the journey of the user in that sense. Perfect. Do you have anything to add? Great. Thank you, everyone, for joining us. If you have other ideas that you would like to hear about, we would love to hear about them. So please fill out our really quick survey. And in the meantime, please grab some snacks and have a chat with our panelists. Thank you so much.