Hi!
I’m Jagna, and I love to design things.
I used to design buildings, but some years ago I fell for designing digital products and I’ve been designing them ever since.
I believe that passionate people can make the world a better place, and I am passionate about designing products that are efficient, meaningful and ethical.
I’m also passionate about some other things, like drinking coffee, vegetarian cooking, art, and science.
If you can design one thing, you can design everything
Because design is not pulling solutions out of a hat. Design is a process of discovering and understanding problems, and then crafting solutions that solve those particular problems in a particular context. If you understand the process, you can understand – and design – any product.
My background is in architecture, and sometimes people ask me why I have changed my career. The answer is: but I haven’t, I have always been a designer. I’ve only changed the context, and instead of designing physical spaces, now I design digital ones.
To some it might sound surprising, but architecture is all about user experience, and – while websites and apps totally differ from buildings – the design processes are quite similar. That, together with the fact that designing and coding websites had already been my hobby for a while, made my transition from architecture to UX design rather smooth and easy.
Back at the university, and later, during my years as an architect, I learned a lot about the design process. And the most important thing I’ve learned is that you can’t design anything of much value if you are only focused on the expected outcome without putting in the effort to discover and understand your actual problems and contexts.
I believe that having experience in another industry gives me a broader perspective when working on digital products and encourages me to ask non-obvious questions that often help me find new ways to approach a design.
And if you would like to find out more about relationships between different fields of design and about how having my background in architecture contributes to my career in UX and product design, you are more than welcome to check out THIS ESSAY I have written about it.
I have no special talent, I am only passionately curious.
When I was little, my Grandpa was telling me stories. I liked them better than the fairy tales, because they were about real people and places, they didn’t end with just ‘and they lived happily ever after’, and one story led to another, and another and another… I always wanted to hear more, and I think it was those stories that sparked my curiosity about pretty much everything.
And then my Grandpa taught me to read and I started discovering world on my own. Many years have passed since then, and I’m still not done.
Sometimes it is tough, because I’m hardly satisfied with simple answers. I think that patterns, principles, rules and definitions are great, and they can make one’s life easier, but patterns are just patterns, no more, and no less. Only understanding what and in what ways drives, motivates and impacts people and events allows you to see nuances within patterns and to actually understand the world and folk you need to interact with.
Of course, you may have your own opinion on this, but personally I think that technical skills and knowledge of design principles are just the tip of the UX iceberg. Skills and principles can be learned pretty quickly, but the designer’s potential is rather limited when there is no solid foundation built on decent knowledge of psychology, sociology, ethics, culture, economics, and other humanities.
You can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards.
The most fascinating (and the most inspiring) aspect of my work is looking at all sorts of data and connecting the dots in order to get the best picture of what can and/or what needs to be done. And the biggest challenge is not only to get the right dots, but also to identify the missing ones. Because sometimes the information that really matters comes from things that aren’t there, rather than from those in plain sight.
I can’t say if it works that way for everyone, but for me the process of discovering the big picture encourages creativity and inspires me to look at things from many perspectives, sometimes even quite unexpected. This is how ideas come to my mind that I can think about and work on… I don’t believe in sitting over a blank page (or in front of an empty screen) and waiting for ideas to fall from the sky, right into my head. Although I do believe in holding a cup of coffee in my hand, it makes thinking easier, somehow…
If the only tool you have is a hammer, it is tempting to treat everything as if it were a nail.
I don’t like situations when tools determine my process in any way – and the thing about tools is that different tools have different limitations, and they encourage (or require) different ways of thinking. That, of course, is not bad in itself, but it can get really bad when you only have one tool to use, no matter how great that tool happens to be (Hello, Figma! 😉 )
My ultimate tool is what resides between my ears – it helps me to consciously choose the the tool that will help me get the best results in any given situation.. Starting with whiteboard or pen and paper, and ending with complex and sophisticated CAD software (ok, I don’t really use CAD software anymore. But hey, I could, if I needed to.).
But seriously…
I believe that being proficient with more tools, gives me more freedom in my process: I can choose the tool that best allows me to accomplish what I want. Plus, knowing many different tools makes learning a new one a breeze for me.
There is more to life than work.
I really love my work, it is a very important part of my life, and I have to confess that I do spend some of my free time thinking and reading about things that do relate to my work in some ways.
But I also love to spend time in the kitchen trying to figure out that recipe for those perfect vegan burgers. Or all over the house, taking care of my 101 hoya plants. Or outside, playing tag (or hide and seek) with those two crazy golden retrievers of mine.
I enjoy travelling, especially if it gives me a chance to discover new places, meet new people, and shoot some interesting photos.
And sometimes I like to take out my saxophone and play a little bit… But hey, I know about empathy, so I do it only when no one can hear 😉
So, you’ve made it till the end. Thank you for your time and your interest in my story!
Now, let me invite you to read some more. Sometimes there are matters that I think about a lot – and then I write about them to not only share my thoughts, but also to provoke others to do some thinking on their own. So, if you like to read, you are very welcome to check out MY ESSAYS.
jagnabirecka.com