Brainster: Hi Catarina, thanks for being an instructor on our UX/UI Design Webinar series! First of all, can you tell us a bit about your current focus? What are you working on right now?
Catarina: Since I joined ready2order at the beginning of 2019 my focus has been on redesigning different parts of their software — a Point-of-Sale with various features. At the end of last year, we started a large-scale redesign of the company’s website. It an ongoing project that spread across six months and involved a lot of different teams. We went through a long discovery phase. We invested in competitor research, heuristic analysis, and understanding our target audience better. Around four weeks ago we finally reached the final phase of designing and testing and entered the development phase. It was a big milestone for us. In parallel to that, I worked on smaller projects, which included an onboarding process for the company’s new payment solution.
Currently, I’m taking a holiday and enjoying the company of my dog.
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Brainster: You have 5 years of working experience as a designer. What is some top advice for young designers wanting to make a career in Austria?
Catarina: The nicest thing about being a UX designer in Austria is that there are a lot of great opportunities and cool companies for you to join. You should try different things to discover what matters to you. I started my career as a UX/UI designer working for agencies. I had some benefits in terms of being able to work on a variety of different projects and it made me more versatile. However, in a software company, you sometimes get to see long-range plans realized. You can influence the product that you are working on in a long-lasting way. If this product happens to touch a big customer base you will have the satisfaction of knowing that the work you did with the team will positively influence a lot of people.
Obviously, sometimes this process can be frustratingly slow, even in start-ups. You might end up running into different agendas when you’re just trying to design meaningful products. You need to be able to make hard trade-offs. Is harder when you are someone with a hands-on mentality and passionate about your work. In the end, I found that working in a product for a long period of time, despite the bigger challenges, brought me more knowledge and joy than the agency work. It all depends on what your goals are.
Brainster: What are your favourite industries/market segments/brands to design for?
Catarina: I designed across different industries and brands.especially when working for agencies. I enjoyed all of it but what really matters to me is to work on something that solves a real problem. I have no preference for a certain industry or segment as long as I can keep doing that.
Brainster: The design world is one big community of interconnected creatives. How has the design community contributed to your agency (knowledge, opportunities) and vice-versa?
Catarina: Last year ready2order hosted the first Dribbble meet-up in Vienna. Some of my colleagues presented a bit of the work we were doing at the time. We also flew to Amsterdam to attend the UXCamp 2019. At the Camp, I had the pleasure of listening to very interesting UX talks from experienced speakers. I got to know a lot of fun people at the after-party. Here in Vienna, the event that had a bigger impact on my work was the Usability Testessen organized by EmpaticUX. It allows companies to test their products with a different range of users. It works like speed dating with a product. I was a regular presence at this event. It had a very positive impact on me because we were always able to test our ideas and solutions.
Brainster: Being a designer means constantly seeking inspiration everywhere around you. What hobbies and interests inspire you the most in your work?
Catarina: I enjoy travelling, especially if the destination is a beach. Watching movies, eating out, wine tasting, and going for long walks or hikes with my dog, Dama. It allows me to turn off from work and to get in touch with simpler things. As a designer, you end up spending a lot of time in front of a screen so taking time to observe things around me is something that is relaxing and inspiring.
Brainster: Do you admire any Austrian designers? 🙂
Catarina: I spent most of my life in Portugal so I can mention a few Portuguese artists that I grew up admiring. Their work had a real influence on me when I was a student. I was very much into illustration at that time and one of my favourite artists was Ana Aragao.
Her unique style and incredibly detailed drawings of imaginary cities and urban places are something that I can spend hours looking at, even now. Other great names are Nadir Afonso and Paula Rego. From Austria, there is a photographer whose work I find really expressive — Ernst Haas. My boyfriend introduced me to his photographs a while back. He’s a photography lover. So we have a big collection of books here at home.
Brainster: What can viewers learn from the last webinar of “The importance of UX in the early stages of building a product”?
Catarina: They can find some real-life examples of design processes that I went through and hear some very honest opinions on the joys and challenges of redesigning highly used products.
Watch the recording of our webinar “The importance of UX in the early stages of building a product”, with Catarina, as a guest lecturer.
