The UX Teacher Prep Podcast
Zee Arnold, founder of UX Teacher Prep, spills the tea on her incredible journey from a 15-year teaching career to becoming a remote UX Researcher in just 5 months. Join Zee as she shares strategies, tips, and tricks to help you land your first tech role outside of the classroom. Discover how to showcase your transferable skills and escape burnout while finding the balance to unleash your creativity. Since her transition in 2022, Zee has been supporting other teachers in their career pivots by sharing her story, roadblocks, and valuable lessons learned along the way. You’ll also hear inspiring stories from other teachers who have successfully transitioned to creative tech careers such as UX Researcher, UX Writer, UX Designer, and Product Manager. Gain insights into the job search process and learn what to expect beyond the first 90 days in your new role. If you're ready to break into the tech industry and regain time for your health, family, travel, and all the things you deserve in life, hit subscribe and prepare to transform your future. Don't forget to share this podcast with a teacher friend who's ready to make their next move!
The UX Teacher Prep Podcast
S2 Ep 1. Navigating the UX World from Big Tech to Startup with Hilda Nalwanga
Unlock the secrets to a successful career transition with Hilda Naluanga, a senior UX researcher at Xsolla, in our latest episode. Discover how Hilda navigated the fascinating shift from a career development coach in South Africa to becoming a key player in the video game industry. You’ll learn how her passion for design thinking and human-centered approaches led her to pursue an innovative path in UX research, and gain valuable advice for educators eager to break into the tech world.
Explore with us the art of relationship building and effective communication within the realm of UX research. Hilda shares eye-opening insights from her tenure at Meta, including the unexpected need to advocate for UX research, even in large organizations. We'll also touch on the challenges and strategies for maintaining a healthy work-life balance while working remotely with a global team, and the distinct dynamics of large companies compared to startups.
Understand the strategic shift from junior to senior UX researcher as Hilda reflects on her career growth. The conversation highlights the importance of marketing one's skills, proactively seeking opportunities, and translating experiences from other fields into the tech industry's language. Whether you're looking to advance in your current role or pivot to a new field, Hilda's journey offers invaluable lessons on navigating career transitions, understanding business goals, and adapting to various work environments.
The following acronyms were used in this interview:
MAANG: an acronym for the five most prominent tech companies; Meta, Amazon, Apple, Netflix, and Google.
NGO: Non-governmental organization
Connect with Hilda on Linkedin
Email Hilda: hbnalwanga@gmail.com
Text Me! 📱I’d love to hear from you! Click here to send me a message.
Resources:
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Welcome to the UX Teacher Prep Podcast, the ultimate destination for educators who aspire to break into the field of user experience and product design. Your host, zee Arnold, a 15-year teacher turned UX researcher, is here to guide, coach and mentor you through every twist and turn as you make your career transition into tech. If you're ready for a more satisfying career and lifestyle and you want the balance to unleash your creativity, this podcast is for you. Now for the show.
Speaker 3:Hello friends, welcome to Season 2 of the UX Teacher Prep Podcast. We have lots of exciting interviews and episodes coming your way. Before we get into the show, I want to shout out a listener who sent me some fan mail on the last episode of season one. Hey, marcella, from New Jersey, I hear you've been loving the podcast so far and you recently got your master's in UX design, so congratulations. Go ahead and connect with me on LinkedIn and I'll send over the Slack information you requested. Thank you so much for listening to the show.
Speaker 3:Today I'm bringing you an interview with Hilda Naluanga, a senior UX researcher at Ixola, a video game company. Hilda stumbled into UX research rather organically after starting her career right out of college as an early career counselor at a high school in South Africa. She then decided to get a Master of Education in Learning Design Innovation. Her first job in UX research was at Meta and she recently transitioned into a senior UX research position in the video game industry. Outside of work, she loves to read, write, do jigsaw puzzles and grow indoor plants. In this interview, we talk about her experience working on a well-established UXR team versus a small startup and the benefits of both, and the difference between a junior UX researcher and a senior UX researcher, and so much more. She also gives some really solid advice for transitioning out of the classroom and the education space.
Speaker 3:I learned so much from Hilda and I hope you will too. Let's listen, all right, hilda, it's so great to have you on the show today. How are you? I'm good. How are you doing, zee? I'm good, thank you. So I'm super excited for you to be here today because, like me, you came from the education space and found your way to UX research, so let's start by telling everyone a bit about who you are. Yeah, so let's start by telling everyone a bit about who you are.
Speaker 2:Yeah, my name is Hilda. I am a UX researcher, currently a master UX researcher at Exola, which is a video game development and payments company. I started my career out as a career development coach, slash associate. I was introduced to design thinking a bit while in college, but I didn't really get very deep into it. But I was always in the space of learning and making learning accessible to people of all kinds of backgrounds, and so after my undergrad I moved to Johannesburg to work at this high school, the African Leadership Academy Academy, and while there I was supposed to be supporting mostly low-income first-gen students who were in, who were leaving high school for colleges, to help them figure out their careers and like find jobs. So that means I was also working with different companies that were looking for, you know, like early career employees in different spaces, and there is this blanket idea that with like the job search, if you have a good resume, you're going to be okay and that's what matters. But the more I began to talk to my students, I realized that everyone was different and that there were so many different powers at play given like, depending on the student, because I had students who were going to like very, very high resourced schools like Stanford, but also students who were in universities in Uganda where they didn't even have a career center and we had a blanket, you know, like everything fits everyone type of service offering, and I began to be like this doesn't seem like it's working. I looked at the data and we were clearly mostly supporting students who already had a lot of resources and they would be okay even without us, and so I got really obsessed with the data and I was like, okay, it looks like this is who we are helping. This is what we want to do. We are not really supporting this group. How do we feel about that?
Speaker 2:My manager at the time she was really just like supportive. She was like I think that's a thing, I think that's called research and it exists in a lot of different spaces. It seems like something that just like comes naturally to you. You're always very curious about who exactly you're trying to work with to make sure that you're doing something that's going to be helpful for them. Yeah, so that's where my curiosity started. So I did the job for three years and when I began to put that very, very just like human-centered approach to my career offering, I began to enjoy my job a lot more, and even the data began to show that we actually were speaking to students. It was so fascinating.
Speaker 2:So, after three years, I wanted to explore this space further, so I left Johannesburg, came back to the United States and went to grad school. I did a master's in learning, design, innovation and technology, which is a space that brings together learning and UX very well. So it was from that master's program that I then pivoted into tech.
Speaker 2:My first role in UX research was at Meta, which I interestingly learned because when I came back to grad school, I was really trying to learn about this space and I knew that I needed so many skills that I did not know how to explain before. So I was doing everything to see that I can learn about this space. And I knew that I needed so many skills that I did not know how to explain before. So I was doing everything to see that I can learn about this space. I was listening to podcasts, I was talking to different kinds of people and I actually was reaching out to people who were on on podcasts that I was like, this person sounds kind of friendly. And I reached out to them and just be like oh, my name is Hilda, I want to get into UX research from the education space. How do I do it? Yeah, and that's how I ended up here.
Speaker 3:Oh, wow, wow, Interesting. So you were reaching out to people who had podcasts and just asking you know, how do I get into that space of UX research education? Wow, it's interesting. You said a lot about your journey and how you kind of started off before you got to Zola as a senior UX researcher. So you were working as a high school early career counselor, right, yes, that's very interesting because you were in the school space but you weren't necessarily a teacher. That's really cool, you know working with students and just seeing those connections. Can you tell us a little bit about what your day-to-day looks like in your role as a senior UX researcher?
Speaker 2:So I'm currently supporting two teams and I'm supporting the payments team. My day-to-day is very much. I work with product owners. I understand exactly what they are working on during the year, and then I begin to look into that to be like okay, so then what questions need to be answered for you to do your job well? So that happened earlier in the year, and so at the beginning of the year, I spent a lot of time talking to product owners to understand the product roadmap so that I can begin thinking about what questions need to be answered and in what timelines for them to do their job well.
Speaker 2:And I do that with all the product owners that I'm working with, sometimes two, sometimes three. And then after that, and during that time too, you meet product owners who don't know anything about research or those who don't think they need it. So it's a mix of being like okay, so these are your research needs and this is what UX research is. So a mix of research, evangelizing and also understanding the needs of the teams that I'm working with, and then I create a research roadmap and then I begin on the research. So I'm always working on about two to three projects at the same time and they are all in different stages of them, like currently, I am analyzing a project that I recently finished fielding for yesterday, while also in the second stage of a design sprint for a research project that I presented a readout for two weeks ago. So I'm always running various projects at the same time in different stages, while also scoping new projects and making sure that my team feels supported.
Speaker 3:Yeah, so doing the work of a UX researcher includes, you know, educating others and teaching them what the process is like and what UX research is all about.
Speaker 2:Yes, you'd be so surprised because my first official role was with Meta and you'd think that for a company that big with resources like that, with 6,000 UX researchers, everybody would understand research and you wouldn't have to do any evangelizing. And even there that wasn't necessarily the case and not necessarily that even there that wasn't necessarily the case and not necessarily that even people there don't understand research. But sometimes you talk to a product owner and what they want is for you to validate some things that they've already assumed to be to under and already working on. And sometimes, like with my current job, sometimes it's teams that are like, oh, because I do, xyz, I don't need any kind of research, and I'm like, huh, I actually don't think so.
Speaker 2:I think I realized that a really, really key part of being a UX researcher that I did not understand fully before I started doing my job was genuinely relationship building, and I feel like all of this falls under that, because even being able to evangelize research and teach somebody about why they need research or what kind of research they need, you need to be in their good graces.
Speaker 2:It's so interesting. Um, you need, you need to be in their good graces. You need to make sure that you guys, you understand each other and you're going to be able to listen to each other, and then you bring different parts of it together. So it's a lot of talking to people, evangelizing research, but also making sure that, because once you talk to people and understand each other very well, then there's a chance that your findings will be implemented, and you want that. So, yeah, it's a lot of communication, a lot of relationship building, which was very much the case in career development work, because if you're going to support students, you need to be able to support those students' needs and you need to understand the students very well, and if you don't understand them, then you're not going to be able to support them appropriately, support them appropriately. So that relationship building piece was a very key piece that I think moved over I guess very seamlessly, from the work I was doing prior to joining Ux Research to what I'm doing right now.
Speaker 3:So it sounds like, when you think about the connections between what you were doing with the high school students, basically knowing your audience and relationship building, was key for you in that transition. Yes, I wanted to ask also with your current role is it remote or is it a hybrid? Or is it in person? It's fully remote, fully remote. Wow. How do you feel about work-life balance with this role as a senior UX researcher?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so most of my team is in Europe and so the time zone, yeah, they're in a very different time zone. To begin with, most of my team is in Russia and Poland and our time zones are almost lit and sometimes I have meetings going on at I'm not even kidding like 2am, 3am. I have had to learn to be like. If meeting at 2am, is it crucial for me to be there? Most times the answer is no, so I've had to make a boundary for myself and say what's the latest I'm going to allow myself to be on calls, and my earliest has been 7 am. 7 am, okay Early. Sometimes I make it 5 am, but 7 am Unless like. So sometimes I have calls, like when we have design sprints.
Speaker 2:Most of my team is in Russia, so I have to. If that's the case, then I'll put a meeting at 5 am and then I'll begin my day at 6. And by meeting at 5am and then I'll begin my day at 6 and by like 2pm, I'm done with my day. I'm trying to be very aware of that giving and knowing that I have to live my life and that is very important. So I'm like, if I begin my day at 5, I'll be done at 3, and then I'll I'll take a walk, then I will read something, then I'll call my friends.
Speaker 2:Yeah, but my days tend to begin a lot earlier than normal jobs just because of where my team is, but even with that, I try to make it such that. So then that doesn't mean that I'm working from 5 pm to 5 pm as well, and my team has been. I think that's something that I'm so grateful for. My team is very aware that human beings come to work and that these jobs are important, but so it's our health and well-being, and my manager is always like oh, you need to take time off or you need to rest. You need to make sure that you're. If you're beginning your day at 2 am, you're also ending it so now, or you're taking breaks and actually taking naps. So I'm very grateful for that to be my case.
Speaker 3:Yeah, it's great that you have that flexibility to kind of make your hours work for the. I know you're in central time right in Chicago. Yes, yeah, to make your hours work for everyone that you have to have meetings with throughout the day, so that is really cool. I'm also a remote worker so I know that we have different time zones, but we're mostly here in the US, so that was interesting.
Speaker 3:Now you talked about basically advocating for research on your team, whether it was, you know, on a large team like Meta, or even on a smaller team at Zola. So I wanted to talk about just I had this idea about, you know, working for large companies versus small companies, startups versus more established you know, ux research, established UX research. So can you talk to me about, maybe, the differences between that and how you feel about it? Because a lot of teachers ask me should I go to a startup? Is that going to be too much, or should I go to a more well-established place, just transitioning from teaching to UX research?
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's a really good question. I think one of the things that I really was so grateful for about working at a very big company at the time that I did is, first of all, I was a baby researcher. My actual UX, ux research projects that I had done I had done in grad school. Right Before that. The work I was doing was very learner-centered, but it was not in tech, so there was a lot of transition that I had not learned how to do yet. And joining a team that was big and I joined a team that had, I think, at least five researchers on just that one team. That meant that there were so many different people who were actually passionate about research and they were already doing work. So, as a person who was just learning, that was actually very, very helpful.
Speaker 2:I know there's a lot of other pressures that come from working in like man that kind of thing, but also just having a team that I could actually learn from. There are so many projects that had been done. So even when I get a project like oh go, work on this literature review, there are so many literature reviews from very similar work for me to look at and then get a place where to start, and I had other UX researchers that I could reach out to when I'm beginning to sculpt a project to see if they have done similar work and talk to them and get advice on research methods. That, as a person who was just learning in the space, I appreciated that very much. One of the researchers on my team is now my mentor and is the person who connected us in your life. Yeah, yeah, because I was still new to the space and I was still trying to learn. On the other hand, now that I'm working at a company where the research team is still very new and big, I'm one of the inaugural researchers in the company.
Speaker 2:When you are in that space, you are the person who knows everything and you're the person everybody comes to because there is no one else. So I have needed to amp up my confidence on this team because I'm the person everyone comes to and even when I don't know the things, I have to find ways of learning the answers to those things, because I have no one else on the team with the knowledge that will help me in those ways. But that also means that I have been able to stretch myself in so many ways. But that also means that I have been able to stretch myself in so many ways.
Speaker 2:I think we have this theory that people who are doing their jobs have already known how to do them and they are doing them. So it's just us who are maybe struggling sometimes. But no one knows everything, and being in a very startup-y, uxr type of space has taught me oh my God, I can actually learn anything. When I was at Meta, if there were design sprints, I had other researchers to support me on those. I'm currently running a design sprint and I'm the first person to do everything.
Speaker 2:But there is so many resources everywhere, so I have learned to learn to do a lot of things that I could easily get help with. So there is that. But it means that I have grown so much more as a researcher because the need is so much greater here, and I'm so grateful for that. So I have learned that at different times in my career I have had to choose what is my priority right now. Do I want financial stability? That's a real thing. So then, how does that work with startups versus established companies? Do I have the skills I need to stand on my own right now, like, what do I want to focus on right now? And then that determines where I want to go?
Speaker 2:But you will find similar problems in similar spaces and you get to flex different muscles and then, depending on the space you're in, I I would say I have talked to other researchers who began in smaller companies and now they work for like chefs and even them. It's just been like, oh my God, it's the same issues. It's just that you have to deal with them differently depending on the context that you're in. So I would say A you have the skills because you're a teacher, because you're in the education space, you're used to being scrappy and working with people, so you have the skills technically to work in a startup or in a big organization.
Speaker 3:I think it's a matter of figuring out your priorities and seeing what you want to pay attention to the most in the first place and then going with that, yeah, being scrappy, and it sounds like same skill set but applying it in a different way, and I feel like it sounds like you're saying that, no matter which way you go, you'll be able to use your kind of like teacher skill set. Yes, I think to manage.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think for me, one of the really hard things about making the transition was being able to talk about my experiences in ways that made sense in the technical world. So it's not even like, oh, do I have the skills to be in a startup? Versus. It's just, how do I translate my skills? Because, at least for me, when I was in the education space, I was very sure that my skills were not transferable and that I had nothing to bring to anyone outside of the education space. And then I began talking to people and then I realized, oh, we just call things very differently. Who somebody else calls a product owner, you will call them something else.
Speaker 2:In the NGO space, for instance, which is I was an education, not NGO type setting and being able to translate the work I was doing and the jargon was actually such a big deal, because you want to sound confident, you want to sound like you know what you're talking about, and if you don't fully trust or believe in yourself, that is going to show. Once I was able to make that connection which was actually like when I was, when I was able to make that connection which was actually like when I was working on my portfolio Portfolios. I hate my portfolio so much it's like pulling teeth, but it was such an exercise in me learning to talk about my work, because you have the same story but you have to talk about it from very different angles over and over and over again until you are convinced by it, until it makes sense, and then, once you do that, then you're able to bring it to somebody else. That, for me, was really, really difficult, and so I had a lot of help in terms of people who I was like.
Speaker 2:Okay, let me pitch to you who I am as a UX researcher. Let me show you my portfolio so that you can help me figure out. What am I still missing? What connection am I still not making between the work I was doing and the work I was doing right now? And I wanted to make it very clear that I'm not a UX researcher, despite the fact that I was in education before, but it's that background that makes me a strong researcher, and here's how, and so I was able to make that connection.
Speaker 2:It was like it didn't matter which kind of space I'm in. I could do it, but that connection is yeah, that was really hard for me to do.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, when you talked about the jargon, it reminded me of my first days, my first months as a UX researcher, when I came into the ed tech space from teaching and I knew what I wanted to say, but I didn't have the right UX research words, so to speak, to really explain what I was trying to say and I just found myself grabbing in the air to find the right words. And now I actually know the jargon and things like that and it's much easier, but in the beginning it was just like what is the word that they use for this, right?
Speaker 2:Yes, yes, no one talks about how, just like language itself, it can be so inaccessible and it can make you feel like I don't know anything, I don't belong in this space, and it's okay. It's not just you. It's very difficult, and so look for the support that you need and focus on it, because you are not wrong to think it's not just you. It's very difficult, and so look for the support that you need and focus on it, because it's like you are not wrong to think it's giving you a hard time. It is not because of you, it's because it's actually.
Speaker 2:I feel like sometimes that it's meant to already do that get keepy thing, and so you have to keep trying. You have to talk to people and you have to learn ways of translating yourself, because you have the skills. I think that's the first thing. Many need to know that I have the skills. I just don't know yet how they apply in this world. That was still a mysterious area to me, or something that I really felt like I wanted, but I did not belong in. Yeah, and figuring that out helped me so much.
Speaker 3:Yeah, that's a good message for transitioning teachers, because when we're in the space of teaching, we just don't think that we can do anything else. And there's so much more that we can do, so there's so many different career paths we can take. So that's important to doing the high school early career counselor role for three years. So how long did it take you to actually transition into UX research once you decided that's what you wanted to do?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so I did that for three years and then I came back to grad school and when I came back to grad school, I made it very clear that I wanted to transition into UX research.
Speaker 2:So I spent, I would say, the grad school year was the year that I began my transition, because while I was taking classes, I was also doing internships with my professors and I was able to take classes in which we're actually getting to consult with organizations. So, for instance, one of my classes I got to consult with Sesame. So, for instance, one of my classes I got to consult with Sesame Street and PBS Kids about their websites and their content for kids and how parents are receiving their content, and that I got to do for free in grad school. So those are the projects of my portfolio in addition to some of my education work. But I did this project and I began to work on a portfolio with that. So I was like, okay, so I had one project from my education work that I was trying to figure out the language for, and then I was like, if I then do one actual UXR project, I can mix and match these ones together and I can always talk about them.
Speaker 2:So then I was actively trying to learn how to market my skills while also acquiring more, so I would say, I began the transition in grad school and actually like learning skills, while also learning how to talk about the ones I had, and I began to interview very proactively, even when I did not necessarily have real UX experience with my belt quote, unquote. And, like I said, I decided to focus on how I talk about myself because I did not have the time. I did not have the time to wait until I have all the skills that I needed, so I was like I need to go out of my way of using what I have right now. So I would say it was the year of grad school and then, after that one year, I started my role at Meta.
Speaker 2:So it was a one-year transition process, but it was very aggressive. I was calling people, I was applying to a lot. It was also the year when the layoffs started in the tech space. That was a lot. That was a lot of moving parts, but I think the transition was a mix of me learning new skills and me learning how to talk about the skills that I had and I don't think I can stress that bit enough and so, within one year, I was able to land my first role and I feel like even in my first role, I was learning how to talk about myself how to talk about myself as well, also developing new ones. I feel like I'm still doing that right now. This is officially my third year in UX research and I feel like I'm still learning to talk apart myself. I'm still learning new skills, yeah.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, I like what you said. I feel like even as teachers, when we work with students, we teach them how to advocate for themselves and talk about themselves and things like that, and then we find ourselves in the same situation where we have to do the same for ourselves and for our advancement. So it kind of mirrors what we do in the classroom. Yes, yeah, so you started off as a UX researcher and then you became a senior UX researcher. So let's talk a little bit about the difference in your eyes between a junior and a senior.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I love that question very much because I think as a junior UX researcher much. Because I think as a junior UX researcher, one of the main differences that I saw and I think the disclaimer is that also this might have been because I was at a very big organization. I was on a research team and I was, in a way, supporting other researchers a lot and sometimes I had research questions come to my table where it was like here is a question and here is the method, now go do the research right. And so in that way, a lot of times I didn't have the full business goal in view and I was working with somebody else who knew the field business understanding, like you said, of the business very much and I was just focusing on trying to answer this question. And so when I was a junior researcher, knowing research methods was very important and knowing how to execute on them was really key.
Speaker 2:So, I had to know how to make a discussion guide. I had to know when I'm going to interview versus do a survey, versus do some other thing, and then I would go in the field, do the research and then I had to know how to make what I've learned into analytics that are going to make sense and then communicate. So when I was a junior researcher, I'd say research methods were very, very key for me to know how to have and communication skills. Now I'm learning that one of the main differences, one of the main things that I have to navigate as a senior researcher, is I have to have a really, really good understanding of the business and the strategy Because, like I begin the year and there are no research questions, there is nothing, and I have to figure that out myself.
Speaker 2:And so understanding where the business wants to go in general for the year is my first step, and then understanding how my various teams need to work toward that business goal is really important. And then I have to come up with research questions multiple of them and then begin to decide of these research questions which one is more important right now.
Speaker 2:So my work has become, yes, a lot more strategic, and that is what I find very exciting. And now I feel like I have a lot more control of my research because I have an understanding of even a man research question Right now, if I do this one, it will go here and here and here and then the other.
Speaker 2:It's like I think strategic research is a lot of connecting dots between a lot of various things, and that's something that I didn't have as a junior researcher. I've recently been working on a study that from the outside it looks like it was a user problem for just one team, but the more I've talked to users I have realized that, oh, this is a problem on a whole other solution by the same company, but that team doesn't even think they need UX research.
Speaker 2:And so I've had to learn how to bring that team in, to reel them in and begin to have conversations, and I'm like hi, my name is. They don't even know me, but I'm here to tell them how to run their product. So it's very, yeah, strategy. I've had to become a lot more tactical with my communication. I have had to understand the strategy a lot more and sometimes I find insights, and the insights I've found are going to be used by a very different team and I have to learn how to communicate with that team and bring it into the whole tool. So the main difference has been strategy and learning how to communicate in a way that's going to not alienate people. Well, in my junior role, I just needed an understanding of the basics of research and that you learn with time, that you learn with time.
Speaker 3:But that's the main difference for me and that you learn with time, that you learn with time, but that's the main difference for me. Yeah, that tracks to what I believe to be true as well. I moved from a junior to a senior in about a year and eight months and I feel like it's the same thing. You know, just knowing the basics, getting the methods down, versus now just being more tied into understanding the business. Knowing the strategy is now just being more tied into understanding the business, knowing the strategy, and really the more projects you do and the more type of diverse methods you use, the more you begin to kind of connect those dots and see trends across different projects and different work streams and things like that.
Speaker 3:So definitely that's where the strategy comes in, and I also feel like that's the most exciting part as well, because you start to just bring everything together and just see, like, okay, from the eagle eye view, you know, this is how we can improve the business as a whole as opposed to just you know, working on one project, looking at one project at a time yeah, I've been wanting to start to do this thing very proactively of being like every after three uh, to four research projects.
Speaker 2:I want to make a roundup of like the birds, you know, like what have I learned? Not necessarily from the specific insights, but about this business, this project? Yeah, and like every after three research projects, I bring my team together and I'm like what have we learned about this place in general from these three research projects? What needs to change from all the different angles? Do we have a good recruitment partner? Even so, it's been having my hands in so many different places and just being like okay, so the research partner we have here isn't being helpful in terms of recruitment, so we might need somebody else. There is this team that I haven't been supporting, so I think I need to support them now because we have been finding learning XYZ that are connected to them. It's been a lot of dot connecting and conversations and, you're right, it's very exciting, but it's something that you learn with time, with the more research that you do.
Speaker 3:I really like the idea about doing that UX research roundup after every three or four projects and I feel like that would also be useful to be able to share out to teams who maybe don't buy into the UX research as much, just to show them what's happening in this space, what has been going on with the research, you know. I think it's important to share that with the organization and not just the small teams that you work with.
Speaker 2:Yes, yeah, strategy, yeah so yeah, strategy, exactly so.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I mean, wow, I learned so much from you today. I'm so excited that I got a chance to talk to you. The last question I want to ask you is I know you gave a lot of little tidbits and advice for educators, but if there's one message that you could send to educators or folks who are just, you know, in the education space and trying to transition into X design, x, research, what would that message be? Space and trying to transition into X design X research.
Speaker 2:What would that message be? I feel like I've said this quite a few times and maybe I'm just projecting, but, like, you have the skills, you have the skills that you need and focus on trying to figure out how to translate those skills in the language that's understandable by product managers and people in tech that you want to reel in. But you have the skills that you need. I think we get very stuck on the fact that we're not in this space. We don't have the skills I think we need to focus on, on asking ourselves when I open my mouth to talk about myself, what do I say? And literally, if you need to, I had somebody who would tell me get a mirror and like, like, recite things in front of it that most uncomfortable thing in this world. I'm not saying, do that, but I'm saying think about the work that you've been doing and now ask yourself, if I was to make this into a case study, how do I do that?
Speaker 2:If I was going to tell a story about how there was this problem and we end up solving it in this way, as researchers, we are problem solvers and as a teacher in the classroom, as a person who works with students every day.
Speaker 2:You are a problem solver.
Speaker 2:Now you're being asked to put those problems into cases, and that cannot be easy, and so focus on what you already have and think about ways of making it translate.
Speaker 2:That's my first thing, and then the second thing as you do that, also find ways of gaining experience that applies in the space that you're scared of, such that you have that balance and that sometimes looks like you reaching out to startups in your area and just being like I see you have this problem. I want to help you solve it. If you can do it for free and gain skills, do that, but find ways of balancing the fact that you have skills, so find ways of translating them and then acquire new skills at the same time. Talking to people is such a good way to do that, because you begin to realize I'm not so different from the people who are already doing these roles that I want to get into, so that's been a very good way of me being able to now choose and pick what is nice from different people and put it in my own portfolio, while also learning new skills.
Speaker 3:Yeah, Great advice I love that. Hilda, it was so great to have you on the show today and to learn about your career transition and your day-to-day work, and I just feel the excitement and the energy that you have around UX research, so thank you for that. And how can people reach out to you if they want to connect?
Speaker 2:Of course, I love UX research and I love to feel about it, so I'd be so happy to talk to people. I'm on linkedin at hilda nalanga, and I am also happy to share my email address if that's something that people would like to take advantage of. But I'm I'm very, very excited to talk to people. I know that for myself. I wouldn't be in this place if somebody did not pick up the call or somebody did not respond to me when I texted. I was listening to people on podcasts and then reaching out to them and being like I heard you talk about research. Please talk to me, like, please, please, yeah, and that one person who responded helped me so much, and so I love doing this work. I'm so excited about it, and so people should never reach out to me on LinkedIn. I'm at Hilda Nalanda. I yeah, I'd love to have this conversation to help in any way that I can.
Speaker 3:Okay, great. I'll drop that in the show notes and thanks again for being on the show today and we will definitely talk again soon.
Speaker 1:Hey, thanks so much for tuning in. If you like this podcast, hit, follow and scroll down to leave a five-star rating. Then share it with a friend. If you're looking for resources to help you on your tech transition journey, head over to uxteacherprepcom. Follow us on LinkedIn and Instagram at uxteacherprep for daily tips and motivation. Have a topic you'd like to hear addressed on the show? Send us a DM on Instagram. If you're listening on YouTube, like, subscribe and share. Until next time, be well.