Ewerton is a student at the MID and tells us about his trajectory from when he started studying Web Design, going through a free course monitor, to learning about the concepts of usability and UX Design, starting to always apply them to his projects.

In addition, Ewerton is an example of patience, determination and organization, and he tells how important all of this was for him to be able to migrate to UX Design, now in a remote position for VMetrix in Chile.

Check out the story of Ewerton and be inspired to take this career step too!

Ewerton, tell me a bit about your background

I always liked drawing and manual things. I was always fiddling with my bike!

As a teenager, I had contact with my first computers, Lan houses And games. With that, I was very interested to know how they were developed.

Because of this, I ended up joining a course of Web Design, who was also knowledgeable in scheduling.

With the networking created in this course, I was called to monitor at a school offering free courses. Over time, I started teaching too! And I've been working with it for almost 8 years.

In parallel, I started working in the administrative part of this school, but I continued to always study subjects related to Design.

How did you learn about UX Design?

I had a certain desire to work with design at the time, but I had no higher education in the area and I didn't have practical experience in the area.

In that sense, I entered a Systems Development Analysis technical course, who had a subject called usability engineering!

At the end of the courses, in the last semesters, I obtained an internship opportunity in Web Design.

Although this stage is more focused on the visual part, I always tried to apply some of my other knowledge, like programming front-end, to create high-fidelity prototypes.

However, in several situations I heard about usability and this aroused a certain interest in me.

I started researching the subject and found Aela and the MID and I decided to delve deeper into the area.

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What exactly attracted you to UX Design?

I wanted to know if what I was doing for the company really worked. Somehow, I wanted to know if I was delivering value to the company.

But at the time, the people there were still some blocks regarding UX Design and usability.

Fortunately, I insisted on the topic and proactively began to apply some research within the company, in order to identify what could be improved in the processes.

The result was the discovery that each person had a different process and flow in their head. That's when I began to apply the knowledge that I had been learning at the MID.

Over time, the results began to appear, and the feedback was very positive.

In addition, I began to redesign the products, the wireframes, creating consistency On the interfaces, with regard to elements, components, and even colors.

Those small changes made all the difference, and I knew that UX Design brought me that kind of satisfaction.

How was the company's perception when you implemented these small usability details?

Unfortunately, despite the feedback, they saw it as a normal evolution of the processes and, therefore, there was not as much incentive in the topic.

They even liked what I had done, but they couldn't seem to see the real value of it.

How was the process of looking for an opportunity more focused on UX Design?

Despite implementing some improvements to user journeys and process flows within the company, I was already at a time when I was feeling stagnant.

Then, some opportunities began to appear, but my life was very busy at the time. I reconciled working in the company with working as a teacher in the course.

It had been a while since a vacancy from a certain company appeared to me frequently. And I ended up recommending this opportunity to my students in the course.

But even so, the vacancy kept showing up. I thought that either there was a lot of vacancy in this company, or that it was difficult to find someone to fill this opportunity.

At that moment, my head crackled and I thought: I'm going to apply for this vacancy!

After the application, the process was very fast, I was even impressed.

The vacancy was for Web Design, but I knew someone who worked as a UX Designer at that same company. Then I realized that there was an opportunity to work in the area.

When I took the selection process test, I decided to show more than just Web Design. I wanted to get their attention but being careful not to sound arrogant.

In this sense, I made the wireframe, the UI layout and decided to show the entire process, presenting all the reasoning and everything I used to arrive at the final result.

I ended up going through the process!

Unfortunately, they never gave me feedback on those extra details that I put to the test, but the company was always very receptive to me and my ideas.

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From what I understood, your vacancy was more focused on Web Design, after that opportunity did you get the vacancy where you are today?

Yes, yes.

As you said, my role in this company was very focused on Web Design, although I had a lot of freedom to apply UX Design concepts and ideas.

I was super comfortable with the job and I really wasn't looking for other opportunities.

But like mine LinkedIn was well structured — what really makes the difference — several contacts, opportunities, and vacancies appeared for me.

In one of those contacts I made, this opportunity to change jobs ended up.

But the movement went very smoothly, and I ended up leaving the company behind open doors, which was, as always, super understanding.

And was this new change for UX Design?

Yes! The vacancy was for UX/UI Design!

The opportunity was in a Chilean company and the CTO was my countryman from Fortaleza. So, despite the company being international, communication was easier. In addition to him, there were more Brazilians on the team, so I was very relaxed.

The idea of this vacancy was to establish a company office here in Brazil. That's why my hiring ended up as a PJ and not as a CLT.

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How was the test for this process?

I received some examples and a very short script about what they were looking for.

O Case it was very well structured and I really liked that.

I asked a lot of questions, set up the flow, explained and argued about the reasons for doing it that way, with that process.

The interesting thing is that I wasn't nervous, because I was working at the time. So I didn't feel pressure to go through the process, which ended up helping me.

What was your main learning during this entire migration process?

I think that what made me go through everything — course, classes, work — until I arrived here was the great focus I have on professional life.

Anything that appeared in my life that could cause me to deviate a bit from my plans, I immediately discarded.

Of course, there are moments of pleasure and leisure, but my main focus has always been on the professional.

So, to have Focus and organization that's what brought me here and they're still very important to me.

What would you say to Ewerton from the past?

I would tell him that sometimes we don't have to find answers to everything before making a decision.

It is often better to take what we have in hand, apply the tests and analyze, rather than wasting time on a previous stage.

One thing that I think is also interesting is to have a community for the exchange of information.

I ended up teaming up with a colleague here at MID and we created a community, which serves as an information hub for other UXers, here in Fortaleza.

It is very important to share learning and experiences with others and this helps a lot in the process.