Tell me about your early years and where you come from.

I grew up in a small post-communist town in central Hungary. It was an excruciatingly boring place for a kid with an active mind. I didn’t enjoy school much, it felt like my worth was measured in artificial and pointless ways, so I checked out pretty quickly.

Outside of school though, I was interested in a ton of things and did pretty well at them: drawing, photography, coding, computer arts and languages.

I kind of came into my own once I moved to the capital, Budapest, for university. I absolutely loved my years in that city, it’s got a certain grit to it and a lively arts & cultural scene.

What did you study, how did your working life begin?

I was discouraged from going down the art school route pretty early on by my parents, but I found other ways to express my interest in the arts. I participated pretty heavily in the demoscene, a global computer arts community. I also spent countless hours browsing the internet and discovered the world of “new media”, of designing interactive technology. This was before the term “UX design” was coined, but I instinctively knew it was the exact thing I wanted: to make technology better for humans.

I studied Computer Science at uni. I had a knack for it, so it was actually good fun, and for a while I imagined I’d become a biotechnology researcher in a lab coat. All through my course I was also building websites, mostly for myself, but sometimes also for other people.

After graduation, I knew that my best chance was to get a job as a Java developer, but the plan was always to side-step into a full stack / front-end job, and then eventually into design. Things didn’t quite turn out the way I imagined, I ended up spending 4 years in a regular tech role, but then I managed to jump into my first UX job directly from that.

How did you eventually make the jump into Design?

In some ways, I got lucky. But also, as we know, “luck is when preparation meets opportunity”. When my tech job had a lengthy lull in workload, I used that time to read every book I could get my hands on about interaction design.

I also never really stopped making websites and even developed some internal tools for my company that I could use as a “case study” to show my interaction design skills. Ultimately I just resolved myself to shamelessly sending my CV through to any and every opening I saw.

I think my CV’s design helped me in the end: I put this weird big red circle in the upper right corner as a visual feature (I was going to replace it with some kind of logo or illustration but never got around to it). Later I heard from the hiring manager who gave me my first job that he passed over my CV the first time (“yet another developer…”), but he still remembered it two months later because of the stupid red circle and eventually decided to call me back.

Have you had mentors or people you’ve looked up to for inspiration along the way?

Absolutely! I don’t know if I would have managed the jump over into Design nearly as quickly as I did if it wasn’t for meeting a UX researcher while in that first Java dev job. She was visiting our office to run some user testing and we noticed that we spoke the same language, so went out for lunch. I was basically gushing and fangirling, telling her that she has my dream job, and how I wish I could work in UX myself! She just kind of looked at me and went “but you can!”—then she told me that she also originally studied Computer Science.

I think that moment was a real turning point for me, meeting someone like me who’s made the jump. It was directly after this chance meeting that I began to actively dedicate time to learning as much as I can about interaction design and started to go for design jobs. I honestly think it might have taken me another 4-5 years to work up the courage to try otherwise, if it wasn’t for her.

More recently, I’ve been thinking back a lot to this experience. I realised that I need to actively seek out career mentorship for myself, to help me set a vision for my future career.

What unique skills did you bring into your design practice from your previous job?

I think analysing complex problem spaces is the biggest transferable skill I honed through studying CS. This helps me tremendously with communicating and designing effectively in high-context domains such as healthcare or accounting.

The other indispensable thing I learned is how to talk to Engineers and bring them onboard. My meticulous designs are worth nothing if the people responsible for building them can’t understand their context, or if I come up with something that’s technically not feasible. Being able to understand deep technical concepts helps me work things out together with the Engineers in a way that they find really refreshing. This allows me to build really strong and effective working relationships with the people who will make my designs a reality.

Have there been any major roadblocks or things that you’ve had overcome in your career?

For me, finding my second design job proved to be a way bigger challenge than landing the first one. That very first job I landed turned out to be an awful place in many ways. I took a pay cut to take the position, and really couldn’t afford to take another cut or even stay at that pay grade for my next role, which made moving on really difficult.

I needed to stay in that bullying environment for too long in order to build up a portfolio that would allow me to get a better job for my next one, and sticking around for so long took a real toll on my mental health and confidence.

What were your preconceptions or expectations about working in design? What was it like getting here? Was it what you expected? What was different than you expected?

The idea/fear that I’d have to be excellent at visual/graphic design to succeed took me a very long time to overcome. It’s difficult to shake this preconception as most mid-level jobs on the market seem to assume and emphasise this as an essential skill for a UX designer.

In my experience it works much better to pair an excellent visual designer with an excellent interaction designer, than to have someone try to do everything. Some mavericks can do it all and do it outstandingly well, but in general, design pairs work better in my opinion.

So what are you working on right now, either for work or for yourself?

Well, I’m obviously dedicating a lot of time to this project, Lateral Stories, which is a ton of work, but also really fun and challenging.

I also offer time in a local design mentoring group, and have been trying to put together a business plan (and a website, I’m always building websites…) for starting up a remote UX consultancy practice, to confront my fear of going freelance.

Where do you see yourself in 5 or 10 years? Do you think you’ll stay in design?

Obviously freelancing is something I’m considering, but beyond that, I haven’t got the foggiest of what my 5-10 year career vision looks like. Now that I’ve accomplished my teenage dream of becoming an established designer, I need to figure out what’s next.

The truth is, despite loving this field and really wanting to grow old working in it, I don’t see (m)any senior positions in Design that feel like they would be a good fit for me. Maybe it’s because of the severe lack of women in more senior roles in the industry? Maybe it’s something else. I’m still figuring it out.

Feeling this way was one of the reasons I was inspired to put together Lateral Stories though, and selfishly I hope that all these conversations will shape how I see my own future in Design as much as they help other people who are just getting started!

My last question to you would be, what advice would you give to people from similar backgrounds to you who are hoping to get into design?

Coming from a tech background is actually an awesome route into Design, and you’ll bring super valuable analytical skills with you that doesn’t come naturally to many who aren’t trained in it.

Also, use your ability to communicate really well with Engineers to your advantage! In my experience dev teams are always 100% more engaged and excited for the product they are asked to build if they have the human context of what they’re creating and why, and as a former techie, you’re in a unique position to fill in those gaps for them.

Watch out though for falling back into old habits. At first, you might find yourself constraining your designs too much by how computers work. Try to shake this urge, and work with the Engineers to find a way around tech constraints, to implement the best experience for the user. After all, technology should serve humans, and not vice versa.▮