Dennis Talat from Germany 🇩🇪 started as a Freelancer in UX Design

FLIGHT TO UX

Dennis Talat

What’s your career background?

My career background is in customer service and service design, in the airline industry. I’ve also been working as a flight attendant.

What interested you about UX? 

My first touchpoint with UX was in a corporate workshop on Design Thinking and Human-Centered Design. I felt like this could be a field that perfectly matches my skillset that I’ve built during my time at the airline. Working as a flight attendant is all about emphasizing with passengers, understanding their needs and creating a memorable experience. I started to read blog posts from UX designers and discovered a lot of similarities with my current working environment and the UX Design field.

What did you like about Valentin as being your UX mentor? 

Valentin deeply emphasized with me by reflecting on my needs and motivations so that I could get an idea of what I’d want to achieve. In the beginning, it wasn’t easy for me to understand if I aimed to completely leave the airline industry in order to work in a full UX job. Valentin is extremely attentive and I really felt how he helped me creating a structured path towards a UX career by encouraging me with constructive feedback – both on my designs and my mindset.

Did Valentin help you to get a UX role? 

Valentin showed me ways and possibilities to build a freelance career that I could run along with my job as a flight attendant. When I landed my first freelance job, Valentin supported me with best practice knowledge on my new tasks and responsibilities. This enabled me to have a smooth head-start and to work independently after a short time.

Would you recommend Valentin as a mentor to others? 

I strongly recommend Valentin as a mentor as he is able to help with creating a structured path for an individual self-development towards a UX career. His honest, constructive feedback and design critique leveraged my learning curve tremendously.