My journey from architecture to UX design
Two years ago, I was working as an architect in Bengaluru. And now I’m about to complete my one-year UX internship at Cusmat Technologies. A lot has changed in the past two years and today I can say that I’m happy that I made this switch.
Life as an Architect in India
Earning a bachelor’s degree in architecture is not an easy task. One has to spend 5 years in order to attain that degree. (In my case that included one year of architecture internship too!). All those sleepless nights, submissions & model making totally drained me. I didn’t want my hard work to go in vain and therefore I started searching for jobs immediately after graduation. That’s when I realised that the freshers are underpaid. Lucky are those people who find architecture jobs with a good salary. I managed to find a job in small firm with a salary of 10k/month. During the initial period, I was adamant that I won’t change my career as I invested my 5 years in it.
The turning point!!
I started searching for alternate career options after spending one year in Bengaluru. I wanted to find something in design field itself and has better opportunities in India. During this period, one of my friends introduced me to UI/UX. He was a front-end engineer and he provided me with reading materials and online courses about UX. I learned the basics about UX through a course in pluralsight and I instantly realised that UX is the field that I was looking for all these days. I learned more about UI/UX through my developer friend and our conversations about website/mobile app design was a great source of inspiration for me.
Finding a proper UX course
The next step was to find a proper UX course. There are a number of colleges in India which provides master’s degree in Interaction Design, Industrial Design, Communication Design, etc. But I wanted to find a course which was focusing purely on UX. That’s when I came across ImaginXP. ImaginXP is a virtual university platform which provides courses in a number of fields like design, business and technology. Since I wanted to pursue a master’s degree, I joined Sandip University which along with ImaginXP was providing a master’s degree in UX design.
Life as a UX Designer
After joining the college, I realised that I made the right decision. During my first year, I gathered knowledge about different topics like UX research, UI design, HCI, User Interviews, etc. I even got the opportunity to work on an international live project. During the second year, I joined Cusmat Technologies as an UX intern. I got a chance to interact with various designers who were from different educational background. I took a risk by quitting my job and pursuing a different career, but it was worth it and I have no regrets.
That’s all for now guys. Thank you so much for reading my article. I will be sharing more about the similarities between architecture and UX in my next article. Stay tuned!
