👋 Oi, mga repapips, Brian Dys here! I love music, photography, and creative stuff like UX design and art. This is a place where I collect my thoughts and works. Apart all these, I’m Jaycelle’s better half and Bryce’s dad. 🥰
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It’s been 2 months already since I’ve hit my 2-year mark in Avaloq. It’s been the best 2 years of my professional career by far — seeing the team in Manila grow from 7 to 13, supporting the promotion of 3 designers, hearing about how our visual designers have grown their skills towards UX design — all these just makes me grateful for being with a supportive team. I’m able to perform well with them and all their achievements are based on their hard work and are well-deserved. Props to the global product design team, especially in Manila!
This year is memorable because I got the chance to meet most people in the local teams that I work with. This became possible because it became relatively safer to meet each other face-to-face. During our team buildings, I felt like I was meeting up with old friends due to the fact that I already met with them frequently through video calls.
Still wearing 3 hats
About me on one hand — how have I grown from the previous year? I thrive in my role as a line manager with our regular 1:1s that give us opportunity to touch base with each other, to have that constant support in regards to each individual’s work experience in Avaloq. In the recent months, HR had launched a better process for employee career growth and salary review — these topics, we openly discuss in our bilas. Being able to connect with designers on a more personal level is something that I find valuable in a line manager’s role.
On the other hand, I’ve also grown in my role as a DesignOps lead, focusing on capacity planning. Sure, there were bumps along this road (and will always have) and for each one, my manager was there to support me. Take for example when I first saw the annual budget spreadsheet, I must admit that I was intimidated by the complex facade of it. I put it off until I was forced to face it with less working time. Looking back, this was one of my lowlights. I struggled to communicate early and frequently with other leads. Consequently, with little time frame, I found it even more challenging to schedule meetings wherein most of them were available. Supposedly, as the glue that supports everyone together, my performance in this area was watery.
On the bright side, I was able to share these challenges with my manager and he helped me by listening and advising. I’m managing it better and proactively evangelizing DesignOps to the whole team, one step at a time. My lesson is to look for people who can help and ask for their help.
When the going gets tough with those two main roles, I ramp down in my individual contributor role — yes, I also help out in the mobile and web banking product teams. This opportunity keeps my product design chops well-oiled, so to speak. In a ramp down manner, I would be supporting the team on a high level — helping them make better decisions and communicate better with stakeholders.
Juggling three different roles sounds a lot, and it is. With better work management, I am able to take a step back, have a down time and think strategically.
What’s next?
Recruitment is a priority, not for replacements but for growth. What excites me is the fact that we’re looking for ways to support junior designers in the Manila team. I see the value in the unique kind of drive to learn and contribute that budding designers have — and that will be an awesome addition to our team.
What floats my design boat?
Well-roundedness, is one. As you could have read, I’m moonlighting as a freelance designer since way back college. In this avenue comes various types of design work — from corporate identities, to websites, to apps, to yearbooks, and what have you. I’m also mentoring designers, especially those who are at the early start of their UX journeys. These endeavors are a symbiosis with my day job in which one enriches the other.
To cap it off, all of the things that I love doing prepares me for my dream to help, design-wise, in the digital delivery of public service in my home country, Philippines. I’m looking forward into the not-so-far future of a more efficient and more accessible online government services for Filipinos. Think GOV.UK design system for Philippines, as a start.
Stay strong, mga repapips! 👊
👋 Hello 👋 out there, fellow Filipino UX/UI designers!
You might be in a journey of levelling up towards being a mid-level or senior designer. We’re inviting you to take this journey with us in the product design team of Avaloq.
We’re a global, cross-cultural group of designers working collaboratively on fintech products, ranging from retail to professional banking apps.
We offer competitive salaries and we are regularly addressing any potential gender pay gaps during our compensation processes.
If interested, you may apply here: 👉 https://smrtr.io/8cFcj 👈
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A raccoon wearing formal clothes, wearing a tophat and holding a cane. The raccoon is holding a garbage bag. Oil painting in the style of Rembrandt.
I’ll probably be laying down my Reading List for a while because July is jam-packed with activities that will keep me occupied. For one, we are moving residences to one that has a relatively bigger space. For another, I’ve signed a deal with three various design projects (an app, a website, and a logo). My project management skills will ultimately be put into test, given that these go into the moonlight. On the other hand, at my day job, it’s excites me to think about opening up opportunities for junior designers to join Product Design Manila at Avaloq — my team and I just need to lay down the foundation to support this move by having key people ready to hand-hold them once they arrive. In any case, feel free to message me in LinkedIn (yes, you, the junior designer). Awesome start of the 3rd quarter! 👊It’s Gonna Be One Helluva July
TRIZ works to formalize the belief that somebody, somewhere has already solved your problem. Just as different species have converged upon similar biological solutions when faced with shared environmental constraints (like the dorsal fin helping both dolphins and sharks thrive in the ocean), TRIZ helps us recognize engineering strategies that have converged across categories and industries, when faced with shared technical constraints.
The agency has also revised projections for its old web developers and digital designers category; it now projects the category will grow almost 40% between 2020 and 2030, validating the demand that so many people working across the tech and design industries have been feeling for years.
This all leads to a strange and provocative conclusion: Time is contagious. As we converse with and consider one another, we step in and out of one other’s experience, including the other’s perceptions (or what we imagine to be another’s perception, based on our own experience) of time
Young workers would make viral TikToks about how older workers look like crap all day, blearily wandering from their beds to their couches. WFH is for dumpy Millennials and Never leaving your house is kinda pathetic! would be the general idea.
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I’ll probably be laying down my Reading List for a while because July is jam-packed with activities that will keep me occupied. For one, we are moving residences to one that has a relatively bigger space. For another, I’ve signed a deal with three various design projects (an app, a website, and a logo). My project management skills will ultimately be put into test, given that these go into the moonlight. On the other hand, at my day job, it’s excites me to think about opening up opportunities for junior designers to join Product Design Manila at Avaloq — my team and I just need to lay down the foundation to support this move by having key people ready to hand-hold them once they arrive. In any case, feel free to message me in LinkedIn (yes, you, the junior designer).
Awesome start of the 3rd quarter! 👊
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For learning to happen, there must be a sufficient supply of knowledge to make successfully acquiring skills possible. At the same time, if there’s no demand to use that knowledge learning is often superficial.
A great leader inspires the team and elevates the people around them. They build a vision that engages and rallies people. With their craft skills, design leads can present the North Star with a powerful enough narrative to excite all disciplines.
A RACI, also known as a responsibility-assignment matrix, outlines how individuals with different specializations will participate in tasks such as work phases (e.g., discovery), activities (e.g., usability testing), and creation of deliverables (e.g., writing a screener or designing a prototype).
Setting UX Roles and Responsibilities in Product Development: The RACI Template
Often, you’ve become a manager, because you’re someone who loved mentoring and developing junior folks, and you’ve been tapped for management because people thrived with your support.
Performance Management as a New Manager: An Overview (Part I)
Once we get rid of the illusionary multitasking and the toxic productivity, cognitive bottlenecks are not inherently bad. They are just characteristics of our mind we need to consider when we plan our work and interact with the world.
Cognitive bottlenecks: the inherent limits of the thinking mind
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This semi-rabbit hole exploration started this laid-back Saturday morning when I saw that Shotcut has an update that supports JSON animations. That’s when I found out about LottieFiles where you can get free animations that are downloadable as JSON files. It’s interesting to know that I can now add vector animations in Shotcut, however, the latest version of Shotcut (22.06) has a bug that fails to export to my favorite setting which is “YouTube” in MP4 format.
This led me to wonder how I can integrate Lottie animations in Figma through a plugin and there were two things that I discovered for myself:
- I can add the vector frame of the Lottie animation in Figma, and
- I can enhance my Figma prototypes using GIF animations from LottieFiles
Next week, I have an upcoming presentation to the design team about an introduction to DesignOps. One type of visual approach that I am planning is a static timeline chart that shows how capacity planning works. Then I remembered how Prezi animates their presentations — that’s how I wanted it to be. So I created Figma components that resizes in each frame depending on the zoom focus. Then each frame is connected in sequence through the prototype instant animate.
In Figma, it works in reverse compared to Prezi in the sense that:
- In Figma, the frame is fixed, and you define the subject’s zoom and angle
- In Prezi, the subject is fixed, and you define the frame’s zoom and angle
Here’s the Figma prototype I experimented with: