Tora Leinen from Norway 🇳🇴 started as a Product Designer at NAF Sykkel in Oslo, Norway 🇳🇴

PSYCHOLOGY TO UX

Tora Leinan

What’s your career background?

Before coming to UX, I studied and worked in Psychology. I have a master’s in psychology and first worked with brain research on infants and children. I then moved on, working at a competence center for user experience and service development. After a couple of years of working with research in the health sector, I began to yearn to use my visual and creative abilities. Moreover, I also wanted to expand and work within other fields that I found more interesting and fulfilling.

What interested you about UX? 

After I started searching for how I could combine my education and experience with more creative and flexible work, I came across UX/UI which caught my attention. What caught me with UX; skills flowed right into my pre-existing ones, but the outcome was visual and creative. In addition, a designer can work within various disciplines and work digitally regardless of location.

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

Having a mentor to talk to, ask questions, get help and gain insight into the job market/everyday work/disciplines etc. is basically the best way to understand/learn and feel your way into a new area/skillset. At the same time, it can be difficult to know where to start, what should and could I ask, how can a mentor help me from time to time? Being new and not even knowing what may be your challenges, it’s hard to ask for the right help. Therefore, meeting a mentor as Valentin was extremely positive and productive in my instance.

Not only has Valentin been so welcoming and pleasant to talk to every week, but he also had a clear program for how we could work together, how he could help me, and what steps should be taken from week to week to reach my goals, and get a good overview of everything I needed. Valentin’s approach has helped me in many ways; not only in the process of learning and developing myself within UX, but also giving me a toolkit for how to tackle design challenges, work alone on projects and give me a better overview of what is actually needed and required in a UX process and how to communicate my work.

I would also like to mention that it has been a pleasure to get to know Valentin, not only professional, but also on a human level. Valentin provided a space where I could ask questions about anything without feeling stupid, inferior or hard to ask for repetition of things I found challenging or difficult to understand. For me, this is an aspect that is incredibly important when I want to learn and develop.

Valentin has helped me with everything, from setting up my CV, doing my project, creating a portfolio and how to communicate my work. Valentin motivated and supported me from start to finish and was also supportive when I received my first design challenge.

Did Valentin help you to get a UX role? 

In my case, I was lucky enough that my first application and design challenge went very well, the dynamic fit perfectly and I got a job offer on the first try. I would definitely say that Valentin deserves credit for my success as what I learned from him and his method was extremely helpful and generative to tackle a hiring process.

Would you recommend Valentin as a mentor to others? 

I would consider anyone who gets Valentin as a mentor extremely lucky and in very good hands. I would definitely recommend him strongly to those who want to learn and work with UX.