A journey to becoming a UX Researcher - 1
I started my career in January of 2007, my first job, as a Web Designer. I never expected I would be a web designer after completing my undergraduate degree in computer science. I always thought I would become a software programmer despite being = null; in programming.
I was lucky to get my first job, in a sense that I had some basic understanding of HTML/CSS from my third year course and art being my passion and hobby, I had a basic hands-on with graphics design. I was really surprised to see that Photoshop was used extensively to design the layouts of web pages in most web design service companies.
That changed my mind completely. I was meant to be a designer all the way. My time pass activity like using Photoshop at home to tweak, modify and enhance photos would make my learning easier to create layouts for web too. Just some more learning needed with various tools of Photoshop. And that was the time when converting a layout to HTML/CSS was called slicing. (really?) Things feel nostalgic when I mention all these. Creating and designing for the web has evolved so much in such a short period of time.
Fast forward to year 2011-2012 when I started hearing the term UI. User Interface. Web design was still there but now you were not limited to just the web. As a designer, the ability to design layouts for variety of screens and devices was rising in demand and layout design no longer became just to create layout but also designing for interfaces. The user interfaces. So hoorray, I became UI designer. Designing and doing the same thing but for another device too called mobile. Same web design had to respond to the mobile screen too. Meaning it had to be responsive now.
And slowly another monster was waking from a long sleep at this same time.
It was UX. User Experience. And for the first time I din't really know what I wanted to become.
At the same time I was awarded full scholarship by the Indian Government to study MCA (Master in Computer Applications) and I left my job to pursue my dream and understand more of how computers and humans interacted and learn in depth about all the curiosities I had that were not resolved and most of the time piqued.