Writing a lot of cover letters so I had to put it in a blog.

Lately I've been calling myself a UX Developer - UX because I focus on how users interact, access, and operate with a product, Developer because I code it into reality. It fits with the type of job I'm looking for, one where I work amongst team and my role is to build pixel-perfect components that fit and work together to make the product beautiful to use.

It helps that I have both design and development experience to call myself this. I began studying UX after getting feedback on the usability of my project, which led to learning a completely new way of thinking via design iterations. On the development side I graduated from Computer Engineering and have taught myself Web. My last job was to build an Angular MVP for an early stage startup and I licked my chops creating production-quality user interaction components, such as swipe-to-confirm and custom number input.

But I don't think being a UX Developer itself is as powerful as the soft-skills that can also bring. Which I've become more confident in explaining to companies over the last few months.

My drive to create was sparked by startups and hackathons where I formed 3 personal priorities as a developer: a powerful value proposition, functional and usable design, and a working MVP. I attack my projects with these, like on my React Native project, Slackify, a tool I made to facilitate team bonding. If I can't bring out the value of a project, design it well and make it work, I'm unhappy and unsatisfied.

I have a love for building community, which came from being the team-lead organizing Alberta’s largest hackathons. In the role I became the superconnector between the student, academic and local startup communities and made a big impact by slowly bringing many students outside their comfort zones. As they began to watch their peers create awesome projects, they began participating as well and eventually carving programming related careers. We shook up the strict academic culture of the school and made space for innovators and creative thinkers.

And finally, my personality. I asked my mentor why he has faith in me and this was his answer. I have an innate optimism and positivity that I bring to every problem and situation I come across. Throughout my years in leadership and volunteer positions, talking for hours over leadership theory and meeting efficiency, I’ve learned how to help people feel comfortable and bring teams together.

I'm really interested to test and grow my soft skills further and put myself in more situations where I can stress test them. Could I massage a bored team into being more excited about work? Could I handle my own team? 2019/2020 had some really awesome challenges and I know the future will have more.