My Beginning as a UX Designer Working Remotely

This article was originally published in my site uxronin.com.br/my-beginning-as-a-ux-designer-working-remotely

“Hey, so you work from home as a UX designer? How did you find this job?” People ask that all the time. Working from home, especially in my case, so far away from the company is not that common in Brazil but this is not new. Let me tell you a little from myself and how I begun.

I started working as a “web designer” in 1997 in Porto Alegre, southern Brazil, for an internet provider. Besides providing access to the internet, the company also used to develop websites for local companies. Back then, I had the opportunity to start working on a regular advertisement company or to choose that new thing called “the internet net net net…” (try to imagine the echo here please). Therefore, without taking too long to think about I chose the new thing. I have always been a curious person so I had no choice.

Someone told me the internet wouldn’t last long and people would never rely on that. What I had witnessed was quite the opposite; the companies realized they had to be the internet and because of that, they would hire me to develop their websites. The time passed by and technology evolved and so did I. Soon many customers were asking for websites developed in flash. On new customer was Terralingua a translation company from Portugal. I believe the year was 2000 or 2001 and that was my first job to a company abroad. The communication was basically by email which was very funny due to the differences from the Portuguese in Brazil and Portugal. The customer used explain the best they could to explain what they had imagined to the site and I struggled to understand. Everything worked just fine.

Besides my regular work during the day – on a brick and mortar local company I would go every day - I had always worked as a freelancer at home for companies on different part of Brazil and some on other countries. The communication plays an important role on remote works and even more important if you are part of a team. Due to technology, years ago it was much more difficult. Nowadays, this is much easier with the variety of tools for meetings, online seminars and trainings, chats, time logging, documentation and so on. Culture of the company you are working remotely for is the another important pillar.

In 2011, I started working for a company called eCore in Brazil. I was assigned to a project of a startup in Florida, USA. The project was about a social network in Tampa. Later I participated on another one in California involving a bank system. Your networks tend to get bigger and different the longer you are part of projects like these. People from different and distant places get to know you and you get to know them. This is a unique opportunity to learn different cultures and expand the horizon.

Speaking of networking, it lead me to the current position I am in right now. Co-workers from the previous company and I team up to work on projects abroad. They set up a company called Z3works and we work for Poeplenet. We started as a small team in a new project. I am a UX designer working with highly proficient developers.

And you? Have you ever had the chance to work remotely for a company? Please, tell me a little about your experiences.