Is there a “rød tråd”?
For the past two months, I have been on a student job hunt where I have been to some interviews and have of course, otherwise received a lot of rejections, which is a normal part of the process. During one of the interviews I was at, I was asked: “So, you have graduated from a lot of educational programmes, do they have some similarities?” Well, actually he said: “Is there a red thread?” a common saying here in Denmark: is “rød tråd” as well as in Sweden: "röd tråd", but nonetheless it means a theme or a pattern. The short answer is “Yes”, but this question made me want to give a better overview of how they complement each other.
Affinity mapping
Studying Information Studies and choosing Design Thinking as an elective gave me a great data sorting method named Affinity mapping. Patterns can be mapped, diagrammed, and consumed through synthesis. To generate an overview of my educational background during this process, I attempted to organize and filter the subjects I had with the help of this method. Firstly, I started writing subjects on Post-it cards. In the following step, I tried to find patterns between each, so then I could physically move them around and organize them in a way that was logical. In the end, my Post-it cards of information resulted in 4 groups. When the categories were created, it was easier to find new connections between elements in different groups.
Here are the 4 groups:
1. It
Yes, it is a broad term, in fact when I graduated from my technical college education in Web-integration, my mum thought it meant I could fix every software issue on her laptop as an It-supporter. As much as I envy the patience and skills of an It-Supporter, it had to do with web development. Frontend and backend coding for websites in most cases with a webshop where my fellow classmates and I would design and set up databases in the MySQL server.
But also how the website's labelling system (Information architecture) should be designed depending on that specific website and the target group. Later on IT was a part of my curriculum during my retail education, while not a big part of that programme, it was nice to see how my former education could be linked. As a teenager data to me was something to add and store in a spiderweb of backend server base, to avoid having text and images merged with HTML, CSS and PHP coding scripts. Many years later data ethics and responsibility was a subject during my Bachelor’s, understandable with GDPR being a hot topic at the time and almost ironic since with age comes responsibility. It was an important topic to cover since webshop creation and the requirements that followed were also a part of the subjects, which made me go a bit back to my roots in Web-integration education. Nowadays during my Master’s my focus is more on evaluating It systems rather than creating them. This is fitting for me due to past studies I can not help noticing elements I would like to be optimised while browsing websites.
2. Business
Although lessons on how a business function was a part of retail education it was much more practical rather than academic. Once I graduated, I knew how a store operated up front with the end users, but I was curious about what happens behind the curtains. My AP degree in Commerce Management provided just that. Anything from marketing, international trades, business law and logistics to give an overall knowledge of the thoughts circulating in an office. When choosing which Bachelor's to take I chose one that was more abstract and based on innovation and creativity rather than a more conservative route. I tried to start a theatre club at my boarding school in 8th. grade, does that explain it enough? The curriculum was about value creation and I’ll explain more in the 4th. group. Otherwise, Digital Marketing was a great next step for me to explore after too many lessons about SWOT analysis. I learned about project management during my Bachelor's and Master’s which I have used a lot when I worked at Impact Extend and now at GAMUCATEX. The more well-known research methods like questionnaires and surveys have been a part of my student projects since the retail education up to now. What both the Bachelor's and Master's provided that different was eye-tracking, log analysis and web-analysis.
3. People
Training in sales psychology and customer service are skills that will always be relevant. Retail is a tough trade and while I am glad I have worked in other fields since then, I will be grateful for the skills I acquired especially now as a part-time UX Researcher. Organisation was my favourite subject during my AP where I learned about team building, management styles and motivational theories. Understanding what makes people tick, get engaged or be interested in a subject matter is very captivating for me personally. That is why I am glad that cognitive science also was touched upon in the last couple of years of studying. Communication gave me a better understanding of how to talk with co-workers from different cultures, which became fruitful once I started working for international companies.
4. Design
For a duration of two years between 2009-2011, I spent every day coding websites from the button-up, before drag and drop became the norm. Back then I would design websites to be usable and engaging without knowing the term “UX”. I also learned about colour psychology and that should never use #000 for text #FFF as a background colour. Plain black and white can be painful for the eye and decrease readability. I know a lot of designers have a background in multimedia design and are proficient in Photoshop. While I designed some banners in Photoshop for websites back then, it was the functionality of the product that mattered the most to me. I later attended a retail education where store layouts were on the agenda to improve usability for the visiting customers browsing the aisles. Providing a service to make it easier for customers has followed me for many years. I have worked in niche stores setting up vaping products and explaining every feature for the client to feel confident and comfortable with the product. The years in retail have given me valuable empathetic skills that I would never change for anything. Having shifts alone in stores made me initiative and braver to act on ideas. For example, I made sure my former co-workers’ work day was optimal by designing a communication intranet and an onboarding guide for them in my spare time. It was first when I started attending my Bachelor's in Digital Concept Development that I was formally introduced to UX design and it has since been an interest of mine. For my elective at my Master’s, I chose Design Thinking.
I actually received an offer
The interviewer who asked the question that inspired me to write this blog did actually offer me a student job. He also mentioned that I had been involved in many projects as something positive. And despite him being kind-hearted, easy to talk to and having a company that created a great service-oriented product, I turned it down. It was due to a lack of hours per week. Still, it was nice to know that being a generalist can be valued and not too misunderstood. On the other hand, another company where I was interviewed were afraid that I would be too bored. That is really not the case, I am just a person who likes to have a broader understanding and likes add-on skills along the way.
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