How and why I chose to get into UX as a visual designer
It was curiosity first, frustration next, and lastly, a passion for new design frontiers
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Exactly like treading up that mountain, my path to UX design was and still is twisted and turned.
Design has always been in my life. I think it’s in everyone’s life, really.
In the pre-UX years, poster design in particular caught my eyes early on that made me want to excel in design. All those fabulous travel posters of the early 20th century that portray a world to be explored. Some of them are practically forecasting a more interactive age, by adding diagrams, maps, and location information for the savvy traveler.
This example of very pleasing poster design advertising traveling to Mount Fuji in Japan is inspiring as a design, and most interesting as an example of how the titillated user is integrated into the pictorial offering by adding a detailed map of the train stops and topography.
Poster design as a production tool has not changed much.
But the way we integrate the viewer, participant, client, or user, has changed everything.
Fast forward to a UX environment
Our design mission has changed from being purveyors of good taste and aesthetics to being conductors of an interactive product-to-client engagement.
The below image capture from Google map shows the UX version of the trek up Mount Fuji.
Interactive real-time image captures now make many places around the world visible from the point of view of the participant.
Google and other apps enable the user to input data that give real-time information about places, events, surroundings, climate conditions, outputting a visual that does not seem to be designed. Of…
