Andy Parker
Hello and welcome to the podcast. I’m Andy Parker, the UX Coach, and this is where I share people’s stories of career success and failure from across the tech industry. Today, I’m talking to Elizabeth Chesters. Born in Wigan, UK, Elizabeth now resides in Munich, Germany. We first met in 2015 when we both presented at a conference encouraging first-time public speakers. Since then, she has worked in-house for several organisations, both in the UK and Germany. I wanted to hear firsthand what it’s like to move to another country for work when you don’t know the language, the environment you’re going to be in, and the personal and professional cultures.
What I learned from talking to Elizabeth was that you don’t necessarily need to move to an entirely different country to experience culture, clashes and discrimination because of where you are from.
I’ve left this interview fairly open and unedited. And I hope you come away from it with more questions than answers and orienting Joy to do some self-discovery of your own. Here we go.
What have you been doing today? How did you get to today?
Elizabeth Chesters
Okay, starting with your first question about me, I’m originally from Manchester. Other people argue not Manchester because it’s Wigan in the north of England, and it’s such a strong accent that I have to try and get rid of it, with every word I speak actively. I lived there until I finished university. Then I started studying computer science, then I moved to London. I was there for five years. And now, after finishing my Masters there, I have moved to Munich, well, Berlin actually. I was so scared of my lack of German then within Berlin, I was like, No, I want Munich. So yeah, just over a year and a half in Munich is already bizarre.
Andy Parker
And since graduating and going into the work world, what are the types of job roles that you’ve taken on?
Elizabeth Chesters
So, I started as a developer, and I was a back-end developer as well. I even did computer programming in college at my A-level, so I was already doing Java then. And I thought I would be a Java Swing developer, which was like the back-end to the front-end, which was also the front-end, but it felt like the back-end just because it was Java. And then I did a sandwich course. So you take a year out to do a year of work experience in a company, but you’re still supported by the University. I was a Java developer there. And when I graduated, in my last year of computer science, I finally came across human-computer interaction. And I was like, Oh, my God, this is amazing. I was getting a lot of mental blocks in development, which was overwhelming. I was with somebody at the time who was just incredible at it. And it was very difficult to not compare myself to that. But what he could do is programming, which I feel like I can do when I look into an interface. But I didn’t know what it was. I was doing usability engineering as a developer. But then it all came to place. And I think, also, with the maturity of UX, it wasn’t quite there, either. Because now you’re talking about 2014, I graduated.
I can’t say… we didn’t even have a design, and it was all done by business analysts. And it took me a long time to get into design.
That was an absolute struggle for about two years. So, my first job was consulting. So you could do a little bit in a lot of topics, you could move on to projects, the entire point was to make yourself a brand that was the work ethic, you’re speaking at conferences, doing blog posts. So you could go into a project either as a developer or work, no matter what your skills were, as long as it was necessarily a project. So I started to move into becoming a UX. And then I wanted to move to London and found the first job which was being a developer, but again, building like telephony menus, which was so annoying to do. And then I finally got my big break. Thanks to Designer Hangout, actually.
Andy Parker
tell us more about that. Designer Hangout is very much the cool place where we hang out. And it’s been around for a little bit longer than that, if I remember rightly, it was about the beginning of 2013 that this young guy in America went “Hey, there’s this thing slack. And I’m going to use it to make it so that it’s possible for people all over the world to chat with each other if they want to.”
But it’s actually helped you in finding work as well.
Elizabeth Chesters
Yeah, absolutely. I actually had two jobs found through there. So my first job was with a company in London again, as an agency so you start with a consulting sort of vibe. But yeah, I was on that since being a developer. I think I found it on Twitter. It’s just like this giant slack room with I think, maybe 20-30,000 people, if not more now, I’ve also met a designer in India, we did guerrilla testing just for fun when I went over to help a friend with something, and then yeah, my last job in London was also through there.
Andy Parker
That’s amazing. It’s quite incredible to see something like that still going. It’s gone through many different guises and tried to do various different things with it.
But the fact that it’s still there, and I see all the different channels for the different countries and everything, as well, in particular, are always got some kind of conversation going on. Let’s go back to this sort of transition. Because you said something that I’m very interested to learn a little bit more about, which was that it was really hard to get that first job. Can you talk to us a bit more about that?
Elizabeth Chesters
For those who don’t know Java very well, it’s a very low level, not very low level, but it’s a language, but it’s a very back-end language. And I think people had a lot of stereotypes on what a developer was, especially being back end development, also with node and things like that. So a lot of I got the feedback in interviews, like you’re too much like a developer, you’re speaking too technical. Why would we want to put someone who’s a developer who usually lives in the attic or basement? Yeah, when we put those people in front of our users, like, we don’t understand why you’re here. And even though I had done human-computer interaction as part of my degree, and my computer science degree, they were just so questionable. Like, why are you here, and a lot of people demand portfolios.
So it was very difficult, not having anything from the industry to prove that I could actually do what I was saying. But what was good was I found London and a lot of volunteering options. I didn’t want to just design or redesign Netflix again. I’ve heard that advice so often. And I’m like, there are so many charities that you can work for, like a volunteer basis, or get in touch with. So I was doing work for Empower Hack. And Women Hack for Non-Profits and UX for change, and or even on open source, like, okay, you don’t necessarily have to learn how to code, it definitely helps. But there are so many things out there where you don’t have to redo Netflix for the 1,000th time based on absolutely no data when they have an incredible amount of data.
Andy Parker
You’re saying that not having a portfolio when going out for applications was a barrier. And your approach to addressing that barrier was to get involved in social hacks and things like that.
Elizabeth Chesters
Yeah, absolutely. Okay, so when I was choosing my degree, I was torn between computer science and I was doing a lot of photography at the time. Even just to become a photographer, you needed an art qualification, you needed a portfolio, you needed to have this and that and other was computer science, you didn’t even really need a computing A-level, it was just bizarre to stand on, essentially, the component of a button and there is more science behind it versus computer science, who a lot of people told me I would need maths and I would need physics, and we just didn’t need any of that. So yeah, my approach. I had to be very honest. I mean, I went through the stage of redesigning things that already existed, but it was getting nowhere and then trying to really make a point of going out. I was given some immediate amazing advice.
When I went to London. I was like, even if you don’t want to do something to make the most of London, say yes to everything and really put yourself out there. And the first company I worked for really did give me a serious work ethic, where it was like you are the brand. You have to eat, live, breathe, sleep, everything to do with your passion. So it was about getting out there and meeting new people. I did also do meetups that were very dev-focused at the time. And it was quite difficult to also move myself away from the design. So I was like the co-founder of the first officially supported code Khadem e meetup. As I was still teaching people how to code and just met people through the grapevine and going through meetups and being like, Okay, this you have to take this seriously and the feedback that you’re getting, I’ve been in Germany for three years. So this is like eight years ago already. So I’m not even sure how I even met all of these people.
Andy Parker
Just by hitting that networking grapevine, right. I found out about that conference that we met at Talk UX, which I’d love to see more of that happen again. I know that there are some really good things that are out there now that are thinking a little bit more about who speaks at things. But the thing that I liked about it the most was the fact that it gave people an opportunity to practise presenting their thoughts and things that they’ve been exploring and playing around with that otherwise would never have got it. You know, you’re not gonna get on the UX London, or Business to Buttons conference. But these kinds of things you are and I wanted to see more of those and they seem to be a lot less these days. Have you noticed similar kinds of things? Like, what’s that community networking vibe, like in Munich?
Elizabeth Chesters
I have a New Year’s resolution this year to get back out there in Munich again, because I think since the pandemic, my stamina has just really decreased and I’m moving to somewhere where I don’t know the language. So well, it was quite difficult to put myself out of my comfort zone. Yes, I’ve made it here. But I like staying here and making it my own. And you know, every time you get into a situation where you’re German just wasn’t good enough, it really is a downer. And sometimes you have to really push yourself and you’re not going to get any better if you don’t push yourself. So next year, that’s really what I want to do. But this year, at the end, I was actually headhunted on Linked In for a school in Munich.
I’ve been teaching migrants and marginalised people in a school in Munich, and how to get into UX and how to choose the path in which they want to join technology. So they have programming courses, and they have UX courses. So I’ve been teaching those. And it was an amazing feeling to just be in a room of people, all designers who just understood what you were talking about. And they were all international. It was a bit of English, a bit of Spanish, a bit of German, you get very humbled in those situations very quickly, and you realise you’re not alone.
Andy Parker
I find that accessibility is a space. So this is an area that you were very much looking at whilst you were a developer. And I can only assume because you’re a good hearted person that this has carried on into all of your design and creative thinking. It’s very common for people to hear about accessibility. And assume that that basically does it pass these mysterious, invisible checkmark texts on work WCAG. And as I’ve moved further away from like product design, or more into services, and systems and organisations, it’s been a little bit easier to expand beyond that concept that actually, you’ve got to think about the things that happened before and after hitting the product as well.
Tell us about your journey with accessibility the things that you’re thinking about and what that means to you. Today, in the context of being a UX designer.
Elizabeth Chesters
At the beginning of my journey, I was still a graduate developer, and I was tasked with making the I was given an internship. And the project entirely was to make the websites our company website accessible. So to be honest, I didn’t really know what that meant. I was lucky in that I was supported by someone who actually has an impairment. So the project had stakeholders in Brazil, also in India. I was starting to understand that not only were it impairment differences, because I was working with a guy who was visually impaired, it was also cultural differences. So they were saying, You know how some countries’ attitude towards impairments, they sometimes believe that it’s your fault. So, some people don’t necessarily believe that it should be something that is fixed. And you just like, What on Earth, a country that believed in reincarnation, they think that it’s your fault and that you’ve been reincarnated as someone with an impairment because of something that you’ve done in a past life. So already, we’re seeing how cultural attitudes really impact things like how companies and the people who make up a company really react to impairment. So that’s where it all began. And even now, I’m the accessibility champion on my team and within the company. It was the same in previous jobs and now especially in Germany, I can feel it firsthand. But in every single job, it’s been diverse. I’ve had my accent mocked 1000 times because they can’t understand me. Alexa mocks me all the time because you can’t understand me. So again, if I do now I will say like, my focus is on inclusion, and inclusive design because I think that definitely the umbrella term makes it a lot easier to explain that it’s not just accessibility. It’s also cultural. You know, things like localization or even temporary situations. You know, you could be holding a child while holding a dog or you could have half an arm, you know, it’s the same situation. You have to truly understand your users and what they’re going through in order to design something that fits them. Yeah,
Andy Parker
the visible invisible as well is, is another one that I quite often come against language is a big part of that, obviously, particularly written language and saying, Well, you know, dyslexia, the way that you typeset, that the line lengths, there’s, there’s these subtle small things, which you might not really notice, but can make a huge bit difference. You also talked about cultures there. And that’s a fascinating story of the idea of, you know, what you’ve been reincarnated as is, is due to a thing that you did in your past life, just taking a little bit of a different spin here. What about the work culture? I would actually argue, and maybe this is me being unbelievably southern here, and probably really putting myself well out of the Happy Valley. I only say it because you commented on it, if people talk about your accent, that happens in England, just as much as it will happen anywhere else in the wild, right? Oh, yeah. You’re thinking about those challenges of navigating office culture and businesses? And then how that relates to where you physically are, is there a bit has there been a big shift from working in those London companies, to working in German companies, I
Elizabeth Chesters
was abused in every office to be quite honest, even in a Manchester office and you know, it was such an international team, I got mocked all the time for it, and you just have to take it on the chin, and really just weigh up the impact, you know, down, sells in London, it was the same story, they couldn’t understand me. And it does get worse if I get angry or tired, because it takes a lot of self awareness to understand how fast you’re speaking, what is the actual build capabilities or understanding of the person that you’re talking to when you’ve got a team of Italians and polish, and Germans and Portuguese people, it was just incredible. But at the same time, incredibly, you have to be incredibly self-aware. And the only difference I would say is that here I am meeting people who have never met a British person. And suddenly you’re wearing the weight on your shoulders of representing an entire country. Maybe even four countries, if you look at the United Kingdom. And then you know, when you say you’re British, suddenly, you’re speaking on behalf of everybody in there, like you’re hitting every stereotype that I had about British people, you’re not really sure how to take that.
Andy Parker
how does that affect you? So you’re you’re navigating an environment where it’s not your native language, inevitably, people are going to speak in their native tongue at certain points in the day, whether you’re in an office or on a video call. That sounds like that’s a lot to be burning through whilst trying to focus on ultimately the thing that you’re employed to do.
Elizabeth Chesters
Yes, I am very lucky that my work language is English, because we are such an international team. And since the pandemic, they’ve really broadened out who they hire. So we have team members in Sri Lanka and Portugal. And so our common language is English. But all of our C-level people are German, and they speak German, and they speak German among themselves. So it is quite hard to insert yourself sometimes into conversations or understand jokes. Because, again, culture is not just the language, it’s the jokes. It’s the inside jokes when we have karaoke at their work at is, you know, it’s all the German 90s songs that they have at family dances that they would have experienced growing up so they know all of the lyrics to 99 Luffebaloons, you know, just sat there like you’re joining in and with a little English. I’ll tell you one thing that was exhausting, though, when I came to Germany, the first time I was about 16, for the Christmas market, actually in Munich, and they offered me a bread roll. I call it a bread barm. And they asked me if I wanted zemel and I thought it was the mustard on the sandwich. And it wasn’t; the Bavarian word was So I was on the hunt for about 15 years, where a sauce called Zemel. And it turns out it was just the bread, and it’s so painful because now I live here and now we have the Christmas markets and I see that word.
Andy Parker
Yeah. And now you get there. But that’s localisation, isn’t it? And I think this is a great example of that because that happens in design every day. I wonder whether you perhaps have an advantage or disadvantage with your colleagues being that you work in English, which is not necessarily their first language. So whilst you have a shared language that you know that you’re working in, do you still feel that there are times where you have to think about the way that you describe something? So like, yeah, you’ve given a great example there of a bread roll. No one south of Watford calls it a barm. But you totally would because that’s you know, regional, it’s localisation to there. It’s no different. Like, if you go, like, I didn’t know what apartment was until someone took me to New Castle on. Now, I know, is that a challenge? Like, is that something that you have to be mindful of as an English worker working in an international company in Germany, with people from all over the world, that you don’t fall into an assumption that, like, well, we all speak English, this is my native language. And so therefore, you all clearly are going to understand the way that I describe things or the conversations that we’re having. Yes,
Elizabeth Chesters
slang is also a big problem, because I don’t necessarily always Okay, so a lot of colleagues will say that they’ve learned British English and what they mean by that, what it feels like is that it’s just the spelling of British English, but they are not taught things like British slang. So you’re trying to express yourself, and you’re using slang and like, you have to really think, and I remember having a Dutch colleague, and I was like, What do you fancy for lunch? She’s like, What do you mean fancy? What do you want to eat? At the time, I just remembered I could not for the life of me just explain what that meant without using another colloquialism.
And I’m also facing this issue in German because our product is in German, and in English. So right now my design team is little me with my B1 German, and my other designer who is Portuguese and lives in Portugal with very little desire, surprisingly, to learn German, doesn’t need it. So we are also facing that issue. So we have to get all of our things translated. But we do have someone in marketing who does help with that. So you can speak English in German. But again, when they’re not designing, it’s very difficult to understand the context of that word. So we still have those issues.
Andy Parker
in that context, let’s talk about that little bit deeper context of words matters. But just like the approach to how you deliver that work, the organisational culture as well, I’m guessing that there’s a lot of assumptions in that too, or things that you believe should be the way things operate. But perhaps they’re slightly different in Germany, maybe it’s just that company, like, have you worked for the same company, the whole time that you’ve been in Germany, or different companies as well.
Elizabeth Chesters
I’ve worked for three German companies so far. And it has depended. So my first company was German. But I think the interface was English. And then in my last company, I was like, managing all the research in German and French and English. And now we have the problem of translations. But not just language, I noticed, very recently, we have a floppy disk icon, when we tell users to save. It’s like some really obscure banner. And when you think about culture, it also extends to things like generations, and we’re getting like Gen-X and millennials and interviews saying how they’re teaching Gen-Z, how to use our product. So we know that Gen-Z has entered the workforce. So you haven’t got a clue what a floppy disk is.
Andy Parker
It’s a curious evolution, isn’t it? The interface iconography and things like that has been one that we’ve we’ve actually been talking about for quite a long time being very aware that there is going to be this point in time where we have these this legacy iconography, how do you approach things like iconography or language for actions and things like that in design when you’re trying to cater for a multilingual multinational market?
Elizabeth Chesters
So the first step is just to research and test absolutely everything. And when I mentioned earlier that I’d gone to India for the gorilla testing, I was discussing with the Indian guy, like, what should my approach be? Should I dress up in a quarter? Because I had them and I can sort of get away with looking Indian? Do I try to blend in to be like one of them because similarity attraction theory suggests that you trust people who look like you who look like they have your best interests in you and because you feel like they understand you the most. Or do you take the approach of I’m a dumb tourist, please teach me everything that you know, like, Please don’t leave out any details. Because, you know, if I mentioned something to you like Marks & Spencers, you have assumptions about whether you have context about that brand or British brand. You know their adverts, you’ve seen them on the TV, you know, their slogans, you know everything about their vibe, but the moment that someone speaks to me about a company or a brand somewhere else, I have no idea about that. And yes, that’s something that you can go away and maybe look up. But to actually hear it from a user’s point of view and understand if they have and share those same cultural expectations or feelings is always also very valid.
So at the moment, I have started, we are very limited in maturity in any UX department within this company, were the first two designers to be permanently employed, the ones where freelancers and yeah, research, we are very limited in our knowledge, but challenging ourselves and being at it completely open-minded and going out there to be like, really, with the curious mindset monitored moderation approach. I will say, though, I do accept that there is a limitation because I don’t speak German well enough, I’m not. I’m trying to prepare myself to learn as much German as possible to reach a point where I can offer research in German and English, because the conversations help people express themselves to really understand German people, you have to understand the language, it was just how they use the product as well, they use things like German metaphors. And I just don’t have that context. You know, they have to explain it to me, and you have to explain it to me in English. And I have to go away to colleagues and be like, Why is this and this is what they do, and, and things like that. So yeah, but recognising that is definitely the first step. But I’d say it’s not an easy or a quick one, either. Been here like three years now. And it’s just like, so frustrating to still be only at this level.
Andy Parker
Yeah, I think we forget that. Kids don’t just drop out of someone and then speak perfect language did you go through the whole, like, do the night classes and all of that kind of thing when you got there for learning basics.
Elizabeth Chesters
I started learning German before I even got here. So I continued to go into the office when I just like, so I moved in November 2020. So leading up to them. I knew I was interviewing for places in Germany. And I had an amazing German colleague who went out and he helped me buy German textbooks. He also studied computational linguistics. So even though he was German, he knew all of the terms in your present continuous tense, and the grammatical tenses. So he was an amazing person to learn from. And then when I moved into Berlin, people told you that you don’t need that much German, but there’s a lie because everything is in German, everything legal has to be in Germany, because there can be Miss translations or misinterpretations. So I had an amazing German teacher, he actually was based in Finland, but from Hamburg. Unfortunately, when I moved to Munich, everything just became so expensive that I discontinued but my work has just paid for a learning course with the Goethe Institut come January. So still in the past?
Andy Parker
Is there anything in particular that you would like to talk about? Or, like, share? Is that something that’s been on your mind that you think we should talk about?
Elizabeth Chesters
We were talking about the missing gap in progression. Even though I go into all the meetups and the talking of the conferences, and like all the volunteering it still felt like I was going into, there was no clear path and what was next and like, I’m also moving to a different country when you don’t have the language skills. UX maturity here seems to be very limited. It almost felt like I had stagnated.
Andy Parker
That’s interesting. Tell me more about that. We’ve recently had Marvin Hasan on the show, who is a Berliner and talked about things like things, something like Head of UX or Director of UX. These things which seem like quite high profile lofty titles, can often be given to people because they’re the only person in the company that’s doing that thing. One of his frustrations was not having other people in the organisation with different experiences to you or longer periods of time doing something to you that you can develop and learn from and having to go outside for that, what’s your experience of that been like,
Elizabeth Chesters
I would say, very personal. I think right now, in my company, I am the Senior Designer with a midway designer. So by default, that makes me the designer and the most experienced designer by default, but doesn’t mean that I’m experienced in what I need to be experienced in. So I’m now going through the phase of understanding just how much knowledge my colleagues have of design, you know, I’m trying to move design, I was hired to do pretty pictures. And it’s been very clear, that’s what people expected from designers in the title. And it’s, it’s somewhat understandable that that is the stereotype of what a designer does. And they needed someone to create features and spec them out and things like that for the developers. But it’s been very easy to see that a company can so easily run around like headless chickens and be swamped with ideas and not understand if they’ve not had a researcher on their team, how they can, how a design team can help, you know, fill in those gaps. And that knowledge is that knowledge of users, and you’ll run things like a survey or a diary study to understand how people use it, why people use it. So I’m trying to move design as an entire department into a more strategic role to help product owners understand what data they have and complement that. And I believe there should always be not just collaboration, but like tension between product owners and designers to be like, hey, we need this on behalf of the users. And they say, well, the business needs this and there has to be that middle ground. So I am now learning all of the language to help me move UX into a strategic place. And going back to designing a hangar, they’ve gained an incredible wealth of knowledge. I especially want to talk about Eddie Rich and Tom Kerwin and Adrian Howard who have answered stress calls when you’re just like, Oh, my God, this situation has happened. What should I do? What language do I use, even though it’s English? You know, the politics of C level suits people and the emotions when you get to that level and the hoity toity titles that you mentioned, is completely different. And even when you’re a native speaker it is very difficult. And there are more pressures in that way that you can’t get away with the fact that you don’t know the language. And there is no, this is not my first language excuse when you word something a little bit too directly or in ways that people don’t yet understand.
Andy Parker
You mean, there’s a combination of the tonality the way that you speak, which being you know, from Manchester, slash Wigan is very direct. Yeah, that is part of your culture, if you say how it is. So you’ve got that combined with? Is this the way that we behave within the work environment in this country? And then in this company?
Elizabeth Chesters
Yeah. I mean, I’ll be honest, not only do I come from where you and I come from a council estate, and we’re going so there is a way of talking in is that typical thing of, you go into work, and everyone calls you, I want to take some make out of your accent, you sound calm, and I’ve worked alongside people who have gone to Eton College, you know, and they have like, the rings on their finger. That’s like a family. So word for buy signal, or like the shield, family shield, things like that. And I’m just sitting there, like, how on earth do I have the same job? But at the same time, like I did, I felt attracted to Germany, because they can be very direct in that way. And I really feel like when they give you feedback, they really mean it. Because it’s not passive aggressive. It’s just straight up aggressive if they mean to be. And when they tell you that you’ve done a good job, they are not doing it because they feel like they need to, they just won’t say anything. And that’s very much the culture. But you still have to understand how design fits in and yourself as a colleague, amongst other people, when you’re seeing a level person being very excited about a feature, you have to play that game with them. There’s a really good book called the games that people play that is quite dated now. And the language is very old. But the principles are very much the same. And it’s understanding that I mean, there’s a saying misery loves company, but that’s not true. Misery loves miserable company. No one wants to be in the worst of moods being surrounded by someone who’s in the best of moods and vice versa. And it’s the same like you have to learn to be pragmatic, and people have praised me for being pragmatic on features and designing ways that can be delivered. But at the same time, you have to have people. You have to let people have those moments and know when to provide data, understand what, when this decision will actually be made, what user impact is that going to have, but therefore what business impact that is going to have? I’ve always been, I have been told in the past that I’m too user focused. And I’ve always championed the user, because I’m a designer, I’m a user experience designer, there was another talk that called it sucks, because it’s, if you don’t have users, there are some user experience, it sucks, which is true. But at the end of the day, we’re there as a business to make money. And what you do on behalf of your users translates into that business approach. So it’s a whole new language, especially when you’re talking to like, head of sales, or the co founders, you know, CP o coos, is different games, that you play a different arts,
Andy Parker
We started off with talking about the challenges of getting off the ground, being able to leave education, and find the first role and that you took jobs that fit your degree, until you could find that opportunity to to be able to move away from that. And something that we see a lot of, in particular right now with the state of the global economy. And mass redundancies are a lot of people career switching, when you have found that, and I think that the suggestions that you’ve provided there of basically getting involved are still valid once you’re here. And there are many, many people just like you who are the designer of one in a company. And you’ve said there’s these, there’s still these developmental gaps. We have these communities like designer Hangout, which are free, it’s a community in the truest sense, because it’s there. And you are either part of it because you want to be or you’re not, what else is missing? What are the things that you would like to see for yourself, but also, I challenge you to think about what you would like to be doing for other people?
Elizabeth Chesters
I mean, this is why I teach because I do want to be the change that I am begging for. I was promised a mentor so many times in companies when I was interviewing just never happened. So I’ve done a lot of work to be the mentor and to share what knowledge I have. I mean, sitting here now did I really have the right to be at UX speaking about accessibility? I don’t know. To be honest, you know, I’m not impaired. And I don’t have that first hand experience. But I feel like that still gives me the platform to be an ally in that respect. Um, in terms of development of gaps, I think it would be nice to understand the tech scene in Munich, one of the weirdest things is that they do have a tech sauna event where you go and sit naked in events, and talk about tech. It was like a very German thing, which I don’t know, if I want to be discussing design, naked. Would that maybe something with clothes on would be nice? Yeah, I don’t know. I think again, it’s my bias right now from only being in Munich for a year and a half. And only just feeling confident enough to be going out and seeing what types of events or are even in English or in German. I have a support network around me. Like the three guys I mentioned. So designer hangout is absolutely something that I’ve read the most off, shall we say, especially since being on a team of two, even now are asking accessibility questions. And inclusive questions like that. So I think it was a mental blocker, to be honest. I think after the pandemic, we got so used to just sitting at home and not doing anything. And then when you’re faced with, this is a room of designers again, look how exciting this is. And you can do this in Germany, I have to push myself. I don’t think there’s a lack of being around. It’s because it’s nerve racking when a language is so important for you to learn. Sometimes you stay in your comfort zone so that you don’t fail. And then you know why you’re failing because you’re not trying. So I think it’s very much a me problem for the moment. I have things around me. It’s just taking a lot of advantage and going through what I did in London. It is frustrating, you know, I had an amazing network in London and left it off. Now I have to do that all over again.
Andy Parker
Is there an element of trust or have having the confidence that if you walk into Small room full of people trying to look for free beer and Crisps to listen to some people from that town talk that they’re going to be the same good hearted people that you would have met going and doing exactly the same thing in England.
Elizabeth Chesters
No, I trusted her nice people out there. They’re all going through the same thing as me, I think it’s just that stamina. I mean, when I also moved to Munich, I moved to the edge of Munich. I now have a dog, which is when I have pride and joy. But now that he’s like two and a half, he can be left alone. And I have to trust that that’s going to be fine as well. You know, when you have a little bit of anxiety, don’t get a dog because you just get them out. And I think this is a typical millennial thing. You know, it was doing the meetups, it was doing the blog posts and the conferences, and I did my masters. And I did as I was advised and I was told in order to make it big in my career and now you’re sitting here and you’re just like, still can’t even afford a house. And we’re all struggling to pay for things. This is not a unique issue, but you just get tired. And you know, what you’re supposed to do, you’re supposed to keep going to the meetups and doing the conferences, when you reach that point and doing it five years, six years later. Now what is that question? You know, and now I’m trying to speak to people, I can’t design a hanger like what is next, I’ve proven that I can do the designs. Now how do I change my strategy to really change my department. And this is why I chose the company I work for now because of the size of that and the impact that I can have, and the freedom that I have to really shape what design means within this company. So I think that is what’s next for me. And that’s something that I came to recently after an amazing conversation with my head of sales, who just really paved the way for what needs to be done, or design here. And there is a lot of chaos at the moment. But funnily enough, one of the people I really looked up to is Gordon Ramsay and he on a podcast recently was saying, you have to face the shitstorm you have to face the storm and understand what it looks like on the other side. And the best chefs in his kitchens were the ones who worked with me for hours when they were taking bets. And yes, it’s chaotic at the moment. Is it the design process that I would like? Are there issues coming up? Absolutely. But this is going to be one hell of a story. But when I move on next, and I have to face the storm, that’s That’s me, right now.
Andy Parker
That’s a really beautiful way of looking at things. I want to check on that with you. Because I wholeheartedly agree, if you walk away from something just because it’s hard, then you haven’t given yourself a fair opportunity and a chance to understand what you’re really capable of doing. or at what point you have gone too far. However, I think that when you put it into that wider understanding that it requires energy, it’s your energy, that there is a risk. Can you do that? If you just don’t give a shit about the thing? Do you actually need to believe in the mission, the purpose of the business, to be able to be that person that’s weathering the storm?
Elizabeth Chesters
So this is also a question I’m asking, you know, I’ve been told I have like the martyr complex, where, you know, it’s understanding how I can help but understanding if I am the right person to help and be the one pushing for certain changes. I’ve worked in teams where processes were in place, and everything was hunky dory. And life was amazing. But, you know, now is the question of how much do you teach other people that and even then just because it worked for that team doesn’t mean that it’s going to work right now, it’s just that you know that that way can work, you do have to set your own boundaries. For me, I do find that difficult, I’m not gonna lie. If I was to quit the storm, it would be knowing that I tried, and I tried x y Zed, and it didn’t work because maybe I wasn’t the right person. Or I didn’t have enough seniority, or I didn’t have language skills to express myself in the way that I needed to. Or basically, you know, you have to accept that you might not be able to change everything. You know, you are not the company. You’re not everybody else. And so where do you draw that line especially like the smaller the company with 13 years old, but we still call ourselves a startup and sometimes they very much have those stats or be attitudes, Belfast do this, do that. See what happens without really understanding the impact that that’s going to have?
So you have to pick your battles. Understand the situation and just know when enough is enough. And you know, if your health is been compromised, then that’s when you definitely need to take a step back and be like, Okay, I’ve tried this and this, this didn’t work, why there’s plenty of times where we can say that the environment and the culture that we’re in is negative, or that is the organisation’s problem of how I’ve ended up in the situation that I’m in, whilst forgetting that we have complete control over what we do individually. And that might be true for you, that you look at that environment. And you say, that’s a negative environment, it’s a negative environment for you, you have the ability to be able to leave that environment and thrive and prosper somewhere else if you wish to do so. And you can sometimes change things within that environment because you think it’s going to be better for others or for everyone, like these small changes. Otherwise, we wouldn’t do what we do.
That is the great joy of being a designer, isn’t it? Admins.
Elizabeth Chesters
Also, I’ve worked in enough companies where I’m just like, yes, it’s chaotic here. But it’s going to be chaotic everywhere. It is. So it’s just understanding. This is the right battle right now. And the next step. But that is awesome.
Andy Parker
You have so much to offer people other than creating an account on Designer Hangout, if you can, where else can people go to continue the conversation with you?
Elizabeth Chesters
I’m probably on LinkedIn. I’m not so much on Twitter now since it got taken over. But yeah, I also have a website with a contact form as well. And I will be on Designer Hangout.
Andy Parker
Thank you once again for listening to the show. And to my guest, Elizabeth Chester’s. There’ll be more episodes soon. As always, if you’d like to join me and share your experience, email me andy@theuxcoach.com, or you can now find me on Instagram, Facebook, and LinkedIn.