Exactly one year ago today, I used Figma, a web-based design tool, for the very first time. Compared to Adobe XD, another powerful design tool, Figma, without a doubt, endeared me to the intricate art of UI (user interface) design.
I started from UX, user experience in April 2020, after I completed a Design Thinking course at IBM. Here I learned the fundamentals and the essentials of what UX design entails. From ideation to prototyping!
I had “ideating” on my Twitter Bio for months. I was very in love with where my career was headed.
Design, to me is like putting up a show from scratch — preparing an app or website’s prototype is as sacred as planning an event.
And now as I sit writing this, I realize I’ve been “designing” (planning) for a long time.
I used to host “The Big Friday Show” just like Basketmouth back in Senior Secondary school. It took an amount of effort and intentionality to understand my very unique audience in order to curate the type of content that could make them laugh. And they were a tough crowd!
Aside from understanding my audience, I had to “test” my content. Did this make them laugh last Friday? Should I do more of this? Should I do less of this?
Now I was nowhere near as funny as Basketmouth, but I knew the funny people and I understood how to arrange them for a performance.
This very well mirrors User Experience Design, and I just realized.
Knowing my audience is the same as discovering user personas. Testing content is like iteration. And these are the very foundations of good UX design. So it turns out I’ve been designing for a very long time. Plotting and scheming, I’m good at that.
June, 2020 I stumbled on a design challenge on YouTube. Pick a random color pallete and a random app idea from an idea generator, and start designing. Just like that! I started with this:
And then every day for about 10 days I built something consistently with Figma and I kept posting on social media. Everybody must see this.
And that was how I landed my first design job. Technically my first job ever.
My actual first job was a make-up job in Osogbo. I earned N1,000 on that job. Somehow I just knew it wasn’t my destiny.
In August, months after I’d posted my designs permanently on my Instagram story, an old friend reached out to me about UI/UX design.
The client wanted to launch a website but needed an MVP (minimum viable product) in form of a design prototype to show to potential investors so they could fund the website.
Actually, the client wanted me to build the entire website, design and develop. It was to be an art gallery website, where users could:
• Browse through catalogs of artworks and purchase
• Put up their old artworks for sale to other users
• Read up on the latest news about the art scene in Africa
• Also find artists, photographers, painters etc for work.
Sooo it was an e-commerce website, a blog and a freelance site for artists. It was hard! Designing it alone did not seem easy, not to talk of Wordpress development. I didn’t know if I should take the job, it was wayyy beyond my expertise. I did not know how to do this job.
I asked some friends for advice. Would you take this job, if you were in my shoes? My closest friend at the time said not to. What if you get stuck along the way? What if you don’t reach the deadline? What if…..
A stranger I had met on Twitter said the opposite. Do it, he said. You have Google, and you have me. Just hit me up if there’s anything you don’t understand. To him it seemed like a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.
I asked my mom. She jumped on it, as if she would be the one to have sleepless nights. She encouraged me to take it. The client was already asking for an invoice at this point.
If I fucked up here, it would show. God, the anxiety!
I spent hours researching what the invoice should look like, tried to make it as professional as possible to avoid disgrace. After everything, total costs ended up being around N200,000.
I presented it to my mom and she laughed. My mom doubled the costs and urged me to send it. I didn’t have the balls, so I just hit send on the email and went straight to bed.
I couldn’t afford to see the rejection in 4K. I’d been applying for several strange jobs from Indeed and Google as at that time, but no one would have me. The only time I actually made it to interview stage was with Microsoft as a tech intern and that was around January 2020; two times and I couldn’t make it to Lekki by 9AM from Ilorin ( one day notice).
I didn’t want to see them reject me again because I was charging them 400K, I started wishing I didn’t follow mom’s advice.
Alas they did NOT reject me, they gave me the contract. I did the design! My younger brother helped with wireframing and together we presented a Minimum Viable Product. We didn’t get to development stage because there was an issue with the investors allegedly, but at least we did design. And if I didn’t take the chance, I wouldn’t be in this moving vehicle, writing this long article of celebration.
They paid, and now my mom tells her friends I painted her sitting room with Stucco. Because I did. I deserve this feeling I’m feeling right now.
Shots from the art gallery website:
August passed, so did September and October and November.
Nothing nothing.
I was living off the high of my virtual art gallery, but money was not coming. And that’s when I found Outreachy — a platform for discriminated tech persons.
This is how Outreachy works: you’d write an essay detailing exactly how you are facing discrimination in tech and if they like it, they’ll give you the opportunity to choose a task. And if you did your task well, you would earn $5,500.
Omo I jumped on it!
I wrote the hell out of that essay, not in simple words like this article. I unleashed my inner writer from secondary school on them. I wrote about being an agnostic atheist(which is true), with most of my tech community being Muslims, I coined a subtle discrimination from my situation to make the essay acceptable. I also wrote about being a non-binary female-presenting person (also true but I don’t talk about it).
Being non-binary has never affected me to be honest because I don’t really care what others think of me, BUT I coined another discrimination out of my situation to make the essay interesting as hell. It was hard!
Ding ding ding! An email from Outreachy on October 6, 2020. I was at the barracks at Ojuelegba when it entered. I’ll never forget! My essay had been selected, I had another opportunity. I wanted to scream and faint at the same time .
$5,500!
Fast forward some weeks later, I had started the task. A UX design task, I was to do a user study for kids, observe them while they were using an app. That was the job!
Unfortunately instead of observing the kids, I was leading them on. The owners of the app wanted to see how the kids would naturally react and interact with the app, but I ruined it for them because I was already teaching the children how to use the app. And Outreachy could see me on video. What was wrong with me?
Anyway, November 23 was the day they’d select those that won $5,500. They didn’t give me. I didn’t win.
The rejection mail hit hard that evening! I had spent time and money on this for nothing. As that mail was entering, other rejection mails from useless companies in Lagos were also coming in. I was utterly jobless, and very lonely…
Imagine crying about your loneliness, wondering if you’re actually ugly and useless, with rejection emails also simultaneously queuing on your Notification Centre. I felt like I would drop dead.
I needed passive income to fund my tech bro lifestyle. It’s also important to add that I didn’t have a laptop during these times. For the art gallery website, and Outreachy’s tasks I used my mom’s laptop and my brother’s sometimes. It was a tough time.
January, 2021 a friend referred me to an American for a design job. It felt like a miracle. It was a proper UI/UX job, at $20 per hour. The client was amazing and fun to work with, I even met his children via Zoom. But unfortunately, after paying for wireframes and userflows, he emailed me and said he was no longer interested. He said he was sorry but my timing was too slow for him.
I can’t blame him even now, I could only work with my mom’s laptop, and that was at night when she came back from work. He would send emails all day, I wouldn’t respond because I knew I couldn’t do anything till mom came back. I usually just slept all day, and worked all night.
So he discarded me, and it hurt. Aside from the money I could have made, it felt bad because all my work was rendered useless because it was incomplete. But I don’t blame him.
Fortunately I had just gotten a remote job (also design) also in January, from the same connect that got me the art-gallery job. This was stable, passive income I had always wanted.
So I ended up getting my own laptop from the dollars and life’s been bearable ever since.
To think all of this happened because I posted my Figma designs on Instagram. Wow.
I’m excited at how far I’ve come, and even more excited at how far I’ll probably go.
Thank you for reading .
