When Client Services met UX: my new year, new career

For the past 10 weeks I have been a hermit.

I have neglected my friends, my husband, my Amazon Prime, my general health and at times, my sanity. I’ve eaten sandwiches in two bites at my desk, not tasting anything at all; I’ve worked well into the night and then been up at 6am with my baby before a full day’s work; I’ve badgered everyone I know into taking surveys, being interviewed and testing products; I’ve stalked strangers in department stores and on the street; I’ve met some incredible people and been challenged to the very limit; I’ve achieved things that seemed impossible at the start; I’ve eaten a hell of a lot of pizza and not drunk nearly enough beer. This, ladies and gentlemen, was my time at General Assembly’s UX Design Immersive.

In short, it’s been one of the most intensive, difficult, amazing and eye-opening three months of my life (the newborn stage still ranks at number one for that) and I’ve LOVED it.

I’ve worked in agency land for years on the Client Services side and have known for a while that I wanted to transition into UX and become the person who makes the stuff rather than the person who sells the stuff. I honestly believe that there’s no better time to be in tech and that designers truly have the opportunity now to create products which have a massive impact on the way people live. After a lot of research and a bit of dithering I joined the GA course and it has been an amazing first step to make that career dream happen. I knew from day one that this was exactly what I should be doing.

A few weeks ago I read this article on LinkedIn where the author thanks advertising for his baptism-by-fire education. This part in particular was met with much head-nodding and wry smiling as I read it:

It’s that intensity, combined with the creative process, combined with the total unpredictability that gets people hooked. Advertising is thankless. Morally dubious. Usually pointless. Shockingly dysfunctional. Only the mentally tough and slightly deranged can hack it, or would even want to. But if you can last awhile, when you come out the other side, you realize you’re walking around with a degree unlike any other. There’s no education like it in the world.

You know how to make something out of nothing. You know how to make decisions under pressure. How to work fast and smart, under the gun, right down to the last millimeter of wire. You can take a big, bloated bag of facts and boil it down to the bone. You can take meta-speak and turn it into plain talk. You can take an insult from a CEO. You can find, not the right words, but the right word. You know how to tell a story. You know how to make a point.

And you learn all this the hard way. Which, of course, is the only way anybody ever learns anything.

Kind of crazy, huh?

This really resonated with me. This post isn’t about the merits of working for an agency or not, but rather about how fortunate I believe myself to be to have had exactly this kind of experience prior to starting GA. I’ve been thanking my lucky stars because I genuinely think that it has helped me not only keep up with the pace and deal with the stress, but get right to the heart of the matter, fast. With projects lasting only a week or two, you couldn’t afford to churn, you needed to Get Shit Done (as our fabulous instructor was so fond of saying) and that kind of gun to the head mentality that the author talks about above really helped me to make decisions and move on, especially during the final client project.

Crucially, I may never even have found my UX path without my old life. It was during my time at LBi, when I was working on a massive UX project for Marks and Spencer, that I got really interested and excited by it. The more UX I was exposed to, the more I wanted to be doing it.

And now, it turns out that my previous experience of selling the stuff has blended very well with my new skills when it comes to presenting designs, seeing the big picture, seeing multiple pictures, getting the best out of a team and of course, Getting Shit Done. I’m hopeful that it will make me a more well-rounded and empathetic designer, and a good asset to any team.

For what it’s worth, and I can only speak for the CS side of things, but personally I think that working in an ad agency is incredibly demanding and forces you to be on top of your shit, which is no bad thing. Yes, it can be insane, utterly insane, but also vastly rewarding to work in such a creative environment where so many people put their heart and soul into their work. It’s not for everyone, and many agencies can be deeply flawed, but when you find one that’s doing things right, it’s gold-dust.

Also, there ain’t no party like an agency party. (I’m thinking of YOU, LBi Rave, and every single party Matt Britton has ever thrown for the good people of MRY.)

By the way, if you want to meet this AD turned UXD then pop along to this in a couple of weeks. I’ll be there with bells on. (Not really, don’t expect bells, it’ll only disappoint.)