This has been the most rewarding but stressful 8 months of my life so far. I have made many mistakes and learned countless lessons. One of which is how to explain to your mother what UX design is and actually convince her its a viable career choice

到目前为止，这是我一生中最有意义但又压力最大的八个月。 我犯了很多错误，并吸取了无数教训。 其中之一是如何向您的母亲解释什么是UX​​设计，并实际上说服她这是可行的职业选择

我什至来到这里的背景故事 (The backstory of how I even got here)

In the 21 years of being alive, I have been many things. A waiter, a Bartender, an Entrepreneur, a day trader, a nomad, a software developer, a teacher but one thing I never thought I would ever be is a “product designer”.

在生命的21年中，我经历了许多事情。 一个服务员，一个调酒师，一个企业家，一个日间交易员，一个Nomad民族，一个软件开发人员，一个老师，但我从未想到自己会成为“产品设计师”。

My journey into product design started in April 2019 while I was a student at MEST — a software entrepreneurship school based in Accra, Ghana. I was in my dark, hot room trying to come up with an idea for my final project that I could turn into a kick-ass startup and eventually get funding.

我进入产品设计的旅程始于2019年4月，当时我是位于加纳阿克拉的软件创业学校MEST的学生。 我当时在黑暗，炎热的房间里，试图为我的最终项目想出一个主意，我可以将其转变为一家创业公司，并最终获得资金。

Starting a company that would one day be successful relied on two things for me:

对于一天来说，成功创办一家公司对我来说有两件事：

1. Finding a problem that affects you and you are motivated to solve it.找到影响您的问题，您就有动力去解决它。
2. Finding a problem you have witnessed during your professional experience and seeing an opportunity to solve it.找到您在专业经验中遇到的问题，并找到解决问题的机会。

Being a 21-year-old dropout, living in a somehow sheltered environment, I had not really experienced any real problems in my life that I would be really motivated to solve so the first option was out. The second option looked more promising. The only professional experience I had at the time was working as a Curriculum Developer and Technical Mentor at a coding Bootcamp in Nairobi.

作为一个21岁的辍学生，生活在某种程度上受庇护的环境中，我一生中没有真正遇到过任何真正的动力会激发我去解决的真正问题，因此第一选择就是退出。 第二种选择看起来更有希望。 我当时唯一的专业经验是在内罗毕的一个编码训练营担任课程开发人员和技术指导。

I loved teaching people, it was thrilling, but I did not want to build another coding school in Africa, they were a dime a dozen. I wanted something unique so after a quick google search I found something that had a huge buzz abroad but very few people were teaching it in Africa. Hell, I had never heard of it before. User Experience Design.

我喜欢教人，这很令人兴奋，但我不想在非洲建立另一所编码学校，他们只是一角钱。 我想要一些独特的东西，因此在Google进行快速搜索后，我发现一些东西在国外引起了很大的轰动，但很少有人在非洲教书。 地狱，我以前从未听说过。 用户体验设计。

I invested days and nights trying to learn about this new thing. Every time I read something I realized how important this is here in Africa. I could see how most of the products we built never really had the user in mind and were sometimes carbon copies of silicon valley based products. I wanted to change that I wanted to create the Navy Seals version of product designers. Then one day I read a snippet in a research article that now made me fully commit to the cause.

我日以继夜地花时间试图了解这一新事物。 每当我读到一些东西时，我就意识到这在非洲很重要。 我可以看到我们生产的大多数产品从未真正吸引用户，有时甚至是硅谷产品的抄本。 我想更改要创建产品设计师的海军印章版本。 然后有一天，我读了一篇研究文章的摘要，现在使我完全致力于这一事业。

Statistics show that every $1 invested in UX brings $100 in return, which brings the ROI to a staggering 1,000 percent.

统计数据显示，在UX上每投入1美元，就会带来100美元的回报，这使ROI达到了惊人的1000％。

Long story short, I never got to start my UX Bootcamp. But I decided to start my journey to becoming a UX designer.

长话短说，我从来没有开始过我的UX Bootcamp。 但是我决定开始成为UX设计师的旅程。

到目前为止的旅程 (My journey so far)

You think it’s hard telling your old African parents you are a software engineer try a UX designer and see how that conversation goes.

您认为很难告诉您的非洲裔父母您是软件工程师，请尝试UX设计师，看看对话如何进行。

Teaching myself UX design is one of the hardest things I have ever had to do. It is such a vast area of study where you have to have a balance of psychology skills, research skills, visual design skills, business skills, engineering skills, design thinking skills, copywriting skills and many more.

自学UX设计是我曾经要做的最困难的事情之一。 在如此广泛的研究领域中，您必须具有平衡的心理学技能，研究技能，视觉设计技能，业务技能，工程技能，设计思维技能，文案写作技能等等。

I managed to scrape up some knowledge, enough to get me a small internship position at a logistics company in Nairobi, but one thing is certain I still know nothing about User Experience.

我设法积累了一些知识，足以让我在内罗毕的一家物流公司担任小型实习职位，但是有一点可以肯定，我对用户体验一无所知。

These 8 months have taught me several lessons.

这八个月教了我几课。

不是它的外观，而是它的工作方式 (It's not how it looks, it’s how it works)

My first few designs were focused on aesthetics. What color should the button be? Is the navigation bar shadow too dark? Looking back now I hate those designs cause I came to realize my job as a UX designer is not to make something look beautiful (though it does help), it was to create something that makes the user more effective and the task he wants to accomplish.

我最初的一些设计集中在美学上。 按钮应该是什么颜色？ 导航栏阴影是否太暗？ 现在回想起来，我讨厌那些设计，因为我开始意识到自己作为UX设计师的工作不是使外观看起来很漂亮(尽管确实有帮助)，而是要创造出使用户更有效和他想要完成的任务的东西。

In a hexagon fighting match between usability (How something works) and aesthetics (How something looks), usability kicks aesthetics ass any day.

在可用性(某种事物的工作方式)与美学(某种事物的外观)之间的六边形战斗中，可用性每天都在打动美学。

用户不在乎你 (Users do not care about you)

Users do not care about your company's bottom line. Users do not care about what tech stack you used to make the website fast. Users do not care if you spent the last month in your office building the feature barely eating. Users do not care if you will get fired tomorrow. Users care about themselves and what they want to accomplish.

用户不在乎您公司的底线。 用户不在乎您用来使网站快速运行的技术堆栈。 用户不在乎您上个月是否在办公楼中花了点时间吃东西。 用户不在乎您明天是否会被解雇。 用户关心自己和想要完成的事情。

Our job as UX designers is to find out what users actually care about. What are their motivations for using your product? Are you meeting those needs? Taking time to understand your users is by far the greatest investment of time you can do as a UX designer.

我们作为UX设计师的工作是找出用户真正关心的是什么。 他们使用您的产品的动机是什么？ 您满足这些需求吗？ 花费时间来了解用户是迄今为止作为UX设计人员可以花费的最大时间。

I have not done this yet but I understand it now. RESEARCH! RESEARCH! RESEARCH! That should be your motto. You should have that tattooed on your chest.

我还没有做到这一点，但是我现在知道了。 研究！ 研究！ 研究！ 那应该是你的座右铭。 你应该在胸前刺上纹身。

不是设计师的工具，而是原理和过程 (It's not the tools that make the designer, it’s the principles and process)

I spent the better part of these 8 months learning tools that I assumed will make me a better designer. There are hundreds of tools to do different things in UX design. Taking time to learn all of them then trying to filter which are important and which aren’t is all a waste. I came to realize at the end of the year that having a few key principles at heart and a solid design process can make you more much further and faster.

在这8个月的学习工具中，我花了大部分时间，我认为这些工具将使我成为更好的设计师。 在UX设计中有数百种工具可以执行不同的操作。 花时间学习所有这些，然后尝试过滤哪些是重要的，哪些不是，这都是浪费。 我在年底意识到，掌握一些关键原则和扎实的设计流程可以使您走得更快更远。

UX社区是家庭 (UX community is family)

I never really involved myself in alot of communities before because I never really fit in. But I found a home in the UX community in Africa, Nairobi and online. Making friends in these communities makes you learn how design is applied in different contexts at different companies and different industries across the world.

我以前从未真正参与过很多社区，因为我从未真正融入其中。但是我在非洲，内罗毕和在线的UX社区找到了家。 在这些社区中结识朋友可以使您了解如何在全球不同公司和不同行业的不同环境中应用设计。

2020年… (In 2020…)

This coming year I am taking more time to learn about UX design. I will be writing more, engaging in the community more and creating more and more designs. I am also challenging myself to start speaking more on UX design.

来年，我将花更多时间来学习UX设计。 我将写更多书，更多地参与社区活动，并创建越来越多的设计。 我也挑战自己，开始更多地谈论UX设计。

I can’t wait to see what happens next.

我等不及要看接下来会发生什么。