From Digital Marketer to UX Designer

UX is booming as a career. Marketing and UX design are both about making a product/service as desirable to the user as possible. If you have found yourself looking to make this career switch, the overlap between the two can make the transition that bit more straightforward.

For a real-life take in this context, we caught up with Emma Vaughan, UX/UI Designer (previously Digital Marketer) at Rockpool Digital to give you some insight – if you are considering the change or are planning on enabling an expert within your team – you can find some first-hand perception right here.

ADLIB: In a nutshell, what key steps did you take to become a UX Designer?

Emma: I have a degree in graphic design and after university, I landed my first design job working in a small marketing team. From there I transitioned from design to content marketing, with a focus on designing and optimising websites to increase conversion rates. A lot of my role would be specifically looking at how people navigate a site, how best we can guide them to and through the site, and the language they were using in search, offsite (Google) and onsite searches.

ADLIB: What got you interested in UX? What was your reason for making the switch from marketing?

Emma: I’ve always loved design and found it hard to completely part ways with the discipline when I became interested in content marketing. For me, UX is a wonderful combination of both; from understanding users, their desires and pain points, to visualising and designing a solution fit for purpose. I love that with UX, everything is guided by the user, and you draw out some powerful insight through interviews and testing – aspects which give marketers some concrete information on how to communicate with the audience. UX sits in the very middle of the Venn diagram – between technology, the business needs and user needs. From experience in both design and marketing, I can comfortably work in the middle, and you need this in order to practice good UX.

ADLIB: Can you tell us about the parts of your job that you enjoy the most?

Emma: I love it all – it’s very hard to pick out certain parts. With UX, it’s an iterative process, and every time you circle around, you draw out more and more insight. I guess if I had to pick one – it would be the visualisation of the solution. I love wireframing and bringing all the research to life. But, of course, this cannot be done without a genuine interest in each stage of the process.

ADLIB: For those looking to get into UX Design, what are your 3 pieces of advice?

Emma:

1. Understand that UX is very diverse. You could either be on the visual side, or the research side – which is more common in large corporations who have the budget to hire a range of UX designers with particular disciplines. You could look at the larger interactions or the smaller details in between, or you could be doing all of it, depending on where you work. It’s worth highlighting as if you’re not at all interested in the visual side (wireframing and prototyping) then you may want to look more at UX researcher jobs and activities, or, you may love writing and want to look at being a UX writer instead.
2. Do your reading or undertake a course – There are loads of activities which make up a complete UX process. It’s hard work and intense, but incredibly rewarding. It’s good to have a thorough understanding of each stage in the process – this will shine through when you come to designing the product/solution.
3. Become familiar with the Agile framework. As UX is an iterative process, it’s important you understand the Agile framework. When we do UX, we will never design a full bells and whistles product – it’s important to understand the benefits of launching an MVP and iterating on your work throughout sprint cycles

ADLIB: What are some things you do to keep you interested, updated and inspired?

Emma: Read, read, read. Practice, practice practice.

I follow a lot of UX profiles on social media – It’s a nice way to see what other UXers are doing in the space, as well as Keeping up to date with anything new that emerges.

I also look at online resources such as UX Planet, uxdesign.cc.

Thanks for sharing, Em!