Growing as a designer and beyond every day

What inspired you to join DBS Group Design?

I attended a UX Talk at Google few years ago, and the head of the user experience team did a good job publicising the team and the cool and fun culture you could experience in DBS. This came as a surprise given it was a bank that was being talked about and most people consider a bank a mundane boring place. One factor I look out for when evaluating whether to join a company is a good culture-fit and I felt that the branding done for the team personified the culture and exuded the positive vibes I was looking for. Also coming from a background working on e-commerce products, I wanted to dip my toes into fintech and see where this could take me.

What energises you at work?

Collaboration among peers, business teams and developers. Nothing can be more rewarding than when people from different departments come together, working cohesively towards a common goal. I find it enriching especially to work with passionate individuals who are serious about getting the work done, and it’s comforting to know despite sometimes having differing views, we’re all in it together. Also, helping to push the UX maturity level, educating the business counterparts on the importance of having us in their product timeline and seeing that being reflected in recent projects, where they will bring us onboard from the very beginning of new projects.

Seeing growth. One of the reasons I joined DBS was to get out of my comfort zone and try out an industry that I had zero knowledge in: finance. Almost 2 years in, I’m fortunate to have managers who’re reassuring in this journey and have helped me grow as a design practitioner. I feel contented seeing how I’ve been growing - from starting out feeling uneasy about not knowing anything, to now taking ownership of multiple projects, and steering the team in the directions to take.

What do you enjoy about being on the team?

Taking on multiple hats. I am at the core a designer but I have been able to hone my skills in other aspects such as research and stakeholder management. I enjoy conducting workshops, user research sessions, and am glad that we’re given opportunities to do so on our own accord.

The People! Whenever I’m in doubt or if I need somebody to crack some design solutions with, I can readily do so with the team and everybody is eager to chip in to provide feedback or even get into a design jam session. It feels good to be able to feel at ease and know that you have a great support team that has your back.

Share a nugget or two about a day in your job

It differs depending on which stage of the project I’m in. For new projects, I will usually conduct a user research session or design workshop with users to walk through the current as-is and do up a blue-print thereafter. Subsequently, I’ll come up with design concepts and wireframes to walk-through with the stakeholders (and developers to check on feasibility) before committing to high fidelity designs. After which, it’ll be a lot of fine tuning of screens based on various user flows with the actual content. If there’re any new components derived from my side, I will be connecting with our Design Standards team to get their buy-in so they can include in the library eventually.