Happy New Year! あけましておめでとうございます！今年もよろしくお願いします 🥳。We hope 2024 will be a great year for you all! We would like to apologize for the extreme delay in our new episode as our life has been getting busy lately. But we have an exciting 2 part episode to kick off the new year! Our guest on this episode is the loveable Teresa Fong! Teresa is a senior product designer at Skydea, an agency in Tokyo. As a designer, she builds apps and websites. But she most enjoys building community. She manages Creative Tokyo, a community with over 3,100 members connecting and finding friends with similar interests.

With Teresa, we act as a 24/7 hotline, eagerly awaiting your inquiries about UX/UI Design, tech trends, and the Japanese work culture. Special thanks to Teresa for curating YOUR burning questions! Let's jump right in and kick off our hotline extravaganza with part 1.

Some questions we got asked:

1. For someone wanting to get into UI/UX design from zero, where would you recommend they start?
2. What advice would you give yourself, looking back at your own journey?
3. Could one get a job as a UI/UX Designer with only a portfolio and no design experience?

Useful links:

Join Creative Tokyo: https://creativetokyo.com/

Connect with Teresa Fong: https://www.linkedin.com/in/teresalafong/

Notion templates for portfolio: https://www.notion.so/templates/category/design-portfolio

Connect with us:

Twitter - DesignerSushi

Instagram - designer.sushi

Our content has been heavily focused on UX in Japan, however, some listeners have reached out to us because they were curious to know about the UX industry in Canada too, especially as a foreigner or newcomer! We invited, Mosope Adebowale, a very talented Product Designer at Meta located in Toronto, Canada. Mosope was born and raised in Lagos, Nigeria, and then moved to Toronto a few years ago to further his product design career. We learned a lot about his drive and ambition to move to a new country and culture, not to mention the number of talented designers in Nigeria as well.

Some topics we discussed:

1. The growing tech industry in Nigeria and Africa
2. Experiencing cultural shocks in both personal and work life in Canada
3. Navigating the job hunting process and overcoming “the Canadian experience” (a barrier for newcomers or immigrants requiring work experience in Canada).
4. Discussing any challenges or differences in being a Product Designer in Canada compared to Nigeria

We hope Mosope’s story inspires and resonates with the listeners who have experienced the challenges of career switching or job hunting in a different country!

Learn more:

🖥️ Connect with Mosope here

Connect with us:

Instagram: designer.sushi

Twitter: DesignerSushi

Some UX mentors and educators recommend you freelance to gain experience for your first role when starting out as a UX Designer. But what if you want to do it full-time and even start your own company? Entrepreneurship and freelancing are one of the many career options you can pursue and it can be a very rewarding (or challenging) experience. We talk with Raphael Hodé, ex-Design lead turned Designer Entrepreneur who has his own design studio in Tokyo called: nowthen.

Some topics we talk about:

• The journey from working at a company to entrepreneurship and freelancing
• The differences between working at a product company, to actually running your company
• Exploring the overlapping skills between a UX Designer and a Founder.
• Recommendations and advice to UX Designers that are thinking of freelancing full-time or starting their own design studio

Learn more:

🖥️ Connect with Raphael here

🟦 Check out the design studio nowthen here

Connect with us:

Instagram: designer.sushi

Twitter: DesignerSushi

“To work at a product company you have to love the product. To work at an agency you have to love the process.”

Have you ever wondered how many industries you could work in as a UX Designer? We have always wondered this ourselves and we’re here to discuss this with you all! And, to help us with this conversation, we have brought in our FIRST guest! Our good friend Nicole Ha from Canada is our guest for this episode! Nicole is currently working as a Senior UX Designer at a digital agency in Tokyo, Japan! She will represent the agency side of UX while Lori will discuss the consulting side and Mikah will cover in-house as a UX Designer!

Some of the topics we discussed in the episode:

•Our design process and general overview of our work

•Our team structure in in-house vs consulting vs agency

•Pros and cons of working in-house vs consulting vs agency

We hope this episode will help you get an overview of the types of industries you can work in as a UX or Product Designer!

Connect with Nicole here

Connect with us:

Instagram: designer.sushi

Twitter: DesignerSushi

Welcome to Season 2 of Designer Sushi! First off, we’d like to make a huge apology to our listeners for the delay in releasing the new episodes. Life got in the way for both of us and Designer Sushi had to take a back seat. But now that 20% of 2023 has gone by, we really wanted to get the ball rolling to release more episodes for you! 🚀

This episode was inspired by Mikah and Lori having discussions with friends in the industry if they felt prepared to work in UX after their education (self-study and boot camp). We both felt there was a huge learning curve we encountered as we started our first UX jobs. 😵‍💫

We hope this episode will help UX or Product Designers that are starting out in their career to get a real-life perspective on what they might encounter as they transition from being a student to working professionally in UX.

Some topics we talked about:

•We never followed the cookie-cutter design process that was taught in our education in our working experience

•We didn’t have practical experience in a collaboration environment (working with developers and product managers)

•We needed more practice with the UI and visual design skills

•The similarities/differences between self-study and boot camp education in how we felt prepared for the real job

Connect with us:

Instagram: @designer.sushi

Twitter: @DesignerSushi

Resources:

1. The User Experience Team of One: A Research and Design Survival Guide by Leah Buley
2. Non-Designer's Design Book by Robin Williams

While we love our career and don’t regret the switch, we have been feeling stressed about the UX industry and want to share the stress we are dealing with to provide more transparency in our UX career. Some of the stress we talk about are:

• Trying to stay up-to-date with the tech industry trends
• Maintaining our UX portfolio while still working full-time
• The pressure to take on side projects or side hustles for career advancements
• The increased competition in standing out and building our personal brand

Mikah also shares a wonderful book for creatives called “Big Magic” by Elizabeth Gilbert and we discuss how fear sometimes gets in the way of our creative endeavors. She highly recommends this book for all creative professionals.

We have also come to the end of Season 1 of Designer Sushi and we are so happy to hear the positive feedback so far. Stay tuned for Season 2 as we’re gearing up for it! 🚀

Connect with us 📱:

Instagram: designer.sushi

Twitter: DesignerSushi

Email: designersushipodcast@gmail.com

Appendix

We understand our listeners aren’t living in Japan and to help understand our content, we are creating a dictionary based on the content we discuss for each episode.

Tatemae - The term relates to “honne” as it means displaying one’s true feelings and the behavior and opinions a person displays in public. It’s a practice in Japanese society to avoid conflict and an act of respect.

Kohai- Means “junior” and represents the interpersonal hierarchical relationships in companies or schools.

Japanese work culture is a world wonder mainly when you live outside the country. Well, we are here to spill the tea on this topic in both our previous careers and as UX Designers! We share our experience of how we dealt with Japan’s work culture as foreigners while working in both Japanese and international companies.

This was a fun topic as we identified the common stereotypes our listeners would typically read about in media and we also compare Japan’s work culture with our home country, Canada, and the Philippines. So do we recommend working in Japan as a UX Designer? The only way to find out is to tune in and listen to this episode!

Connect with us:

Instagram: designer.sushi

Twitter: DesignerSushi

Email: designersushipodcast@gmail.com

Appendix

We understand our listeners aren’t living in Japan and to help understand our content, we are creating a dictionary based on the content we discuss for each episode.

Senpai- A term used to say to someone that’s your mentor, or a colleague that’s been in the company or school longer than you.

Hanami- An event to view the cherry blossoms at full bloom by drinking or having a picnic under these trees.

Dispatch company - A company that hires dispatchers (employees) and sends them to work for a company that is in need of more workers. The dispatcher will be paid and sign a contract with the dispatch company.

Hanko - A stamp that is used as your signature to “sign” official documents such as bank accounts, immigration papers, etc. Sometimes, a hanko is needed in some institutions due to traditions or cultural reasons.

Suica card - a fare card that’s used for train lines in Japan. It’s a common fare card for those living in Tokyo and surrounding areas.

Keigo- The Japanese language that is the speech to show respect. It’s common to speak this speech in business and work situations where you talk with higher-ups, seniors, or even customers.