UX/UI from London to China
Sophia Tai graduated from GMD in 2017. She is currently a UX/UI designer at Mporium Group, a fast-growing Artificial Intelligence based tech startup in central London. Her job includes exciting challenges with room for growth, a great support system and help in preparing her own Professional Development Plan.
Sophia has also just been accepted on to an Entrepreneurship Programme which will take place in July-August, based in Shenzhen University of Science and Technology (China), organised by the European Innovation Academy. It is a 3-week intensive course for building a start-up in teams. Sophia’s assigned role will most probably be as CDO (Chief Design Officer) responsible for development of UX/UI Design.
Sophia reflects on her current position, what led her there and plans for the future…
“User Experience and User Interface design is currently one of the most exciting fields to get into from a design background. It is a very mixed profession with many coming from areas such as psychology, anthropology, human factors, human-computer interaction, architecture etc. It is a growing new field and involves research and experimentation. The psychology aspect has drawn me to it as well and I have always had an interest in tech.
I find the most valuable things we had learnt on GMD are the ones that can not be seen, such as Design Thinking, and being able to apply that to any problem. Also methodologies in both research and design process, as well as the importance of documentation, which we learnt through creating research documents. These are all extremely useful skills,which are not taught just anywhere and have stuck with me even after finishing the course.
I am lucky to be in a privileged position at my workplace. Being the only designer at a software company is a tough challenge, I have been thrown into the unknown and at the same time, I am given a lot of trust decisions-wise. It’s a huge learning curve, and I am pushed to rely on outside sources such as online UX and design communities as well as fortnightly meetings with my UX mentor. When I finished the GMD course, I knew I didn’t want to stop learning, and having developed a Professional Development Plan and receiving mentorship from older colleagues is definitely of benefit to me in my current position.
From my current role at a tech startup as well as my the scholarship for the entrepreneurship programme in Shenzhen (the newest and fastest growing city for tech and design) it would seem my direction is clear. However I have also been playing with the idea of doing an MA in Type Design sometime in the next 2-3 years. I would like to stay open-minded and learn as much as possible with minimal limitations.”
