#10 - Luck from Motion
Hello designers,
This past month and a half I wasn’t as active on this newsletter as I had hoped - sorry for disappearing!
But while I had no time to write, a lot of things happened that you haven’t seen (unless you follow me on LinkedIn).
I mentored one of the (winning) teams at the local UX Challenge
In February I was contacted by the organizer of the UX Challenge, a competition for students here in Trento (which is expanding now as a format to other European countries) where students and graduates must solve and present a solution to a real problem presented by local companies that lack a design figure in their team. The organizer wanted me to participate as a mentor to one of the teams. The experience turned out to be quite fun and I’m proud to say the team I mentored won one of the two prizes for the competition.
I spoke at WIAD 2024
Back during the Christmas holidays, I submitted a talk for World Information Architecture Day (WIAD). If you haven’t heard of WIAD before, it’s a worldwide event related to IA and UX that takes place every year and that I recommend checking out! My talk was selected for the Italian chapter in Milan and I was overwhelmed by the positive response, off and online. The topic was one I’m passionate about: how digital products neglect the user base (an extension of my article from a few months ago). I’m going to repeat the talk in May locally and I hope I can give it in English on the web sometime soon, I’ll keep you posted!
I was a guest on Top Mentor Podcast
Cloud Devops Engineer and Clouds Mentor Victor Garcia reached out to me about being a guest on his podcast Top Mentor, where we chatted about mentoring, UX, and imposter syndrome. If you are curious to know more about what it’s like to become a mentee or a mentor yourself, definitely check it out on YouTube!
I became a volunteer for the local UX meetup
Last November I attended a local UX event and signed up to be a volunteer for the association that has started running these events again after the end of COVID. The result: I met a lot of new designers in the area and was asked to participate as a speaker at one of the next events we are planning.
Just luck?
When talking about success in one’s career, luck is definitively a factor we refer to. While the so-called “blind luck” can definitively bless us with what we need, I think everything that happened to me in the past month could be referred to as Luck by Motion. It’s a concept I stumbled upon just recently through Ali Abdaal’s Daily Productivity newsletter, where he describes Luck by Motion as:
Luck [that] thrives on action. The more you put yourself out there, creating stuff and connecting with people, the greater the chances of stumbling upon serendipity.
I would say all of the above instances fall into Luck by Motion:
If I hadn’t gotten in touch with my former university professor back in the fall, he wouldn’t have recommended me as a mentor for the UX Challenge.
If I hadn’t signed up on a few mentoring platforms and started taking on mentees despite my imposter syndrome, I wouldn’t have become Top Mentor on Mentorcruise and gotten noticed for the podcast.
If I hadn’t started applying to events and conferences, I wouldn’t have gotten selected for a couple of events including WIAD. This gave me an incredible boost in terms of networking with fellow designers.
If I hadn’t applied as a volunteer, I would have missed a few networking opportunities plus the public speaking gig.
How do you leverage Luck by Motion as a student or junior?
Reader, I know that as a student or junior, you might be more interested in getting a job or gig compared to what I described above - so here are a few examples of Luck by Motion you can apply:
Attend meetups and conferences. If you’re more of an introvert like me, applying as a volunteer rather than a regular attendee can give you more chances to network in particular with both organizers and speakers. In general, attending these kinds of events and talking with fellow designers can help you learn about open positions or other noteworthy opportunities. I talked about the experience of volunteering for a conference here. (PS: don’t stick only to UX-related events! Look into tech meetups too)
Sign up for hackathons and challenges. These are not only ways to put your skills to the test (and potentially get a portfolio case study out of it) but also a chance to learn about open positions in companies who are sponsoring such events - and get ahead of other designers who apply for the same spot.
Stay active online. Nothing interesting nearby? You can always post on LinkedIn, comment on others’ posts, or become an active member of online design communities on Slack and Discord.
Need a mentor for your UX journey?
Mentorcruise spots are currently full but you can always sign up for the waiting list or book a Session if you need short-term feedback on your portfolio or design work.
Best of luck on your UX path!
- Maria