Find solution
What are the career prospects in biotechnology?

Is it viable to start a career in User Experience Design in the Philippines? What are the career prospects?

  • Hello. I want to know the prospects of building a career in User Experience/Interface Design here in the Philippines. I am a fresh graduate of BS Industrial Engineering and am currently doing my MS in Industrial Engineering with a specialization in Human Factors and Ergonomics (HF&E). One of the areas of HF&E that I became very fascinated in as a graduate student is on Human-Computer Interaction, specifically on Web Design and Evaluation (i.e., user-centered design and usability). Hence my thesis on this subject. I am now seeking full-time job opportunities so I can finance my studies. I want to start a career in User Experience Design however I'm still unsure if this sort of career is a viable one in this country. Are there big recognized companies here who hire User Experience Designers/Engineers? And if so, do they pay well for jobs such as this? How is the opportunity for growth? Finally, how may I start off knowing that I have zero real work experience (except for four months as an intern)? I've just begun to read about these online but I would like to hear from actual UX/UI practitioners here in the Philippines who can share a practical perspective. Moreover, I know how to use Adobe Photoshop at an intermediate level but I honestly have very minimal knowledge in coding. However, I understand that UX/UI designers primarily deal with the interactions between the user and the product/website. So I guess coding skills are not necessary for me, are they? Any advice would be much appreciated. Thank you so much.

  • Answer:

    Let me go with my personal experience so you have something concrete. I started my UX career at a much less convenient time: when I entered college as a Psych student (where UX wasn't exactly part of the curriculum and general direction was along Human Resource Management) at a year when the practice was far less developed and valued compared to today. I did UX for open source projects while thinking I'm pursuing the Human Resource path. Fast forward to years after, I formed Usability Philippines with some other advocates of the field. This org isn't the most active in the world, but it's a significant local resource for your UX career compared to nothing when I started. Right after finishing college, I was afraid of not getting to pursue UX. Was going through with HR job applications and considered studying programming. Very fortunately, I  to stumbled upon a UX specialist job after scouring the Internet. Could have been the absolute only one available for me at the time. Serendipity for me and my employer who's been looking for one for a while. Finally got to professionally practice it and never had to learn to code (until a month ago, when I tried to build a product from scratch). It was extremely different from the situation today, where a quick search on a job site will give you a list of options. Things snowballed for me shortly after that. Landed on different UX-centric jobs and experimented on producing my own product from scratch (expected to be on App Store Aug 2013 :D). Basically, I'm trying to say you don't have an excuse against going for it today. Your question is whether it's viable or not. It is but, I urge you to make it more viable. I know you can.

Allan Caeg at Quora Visit the source

Was this solution helpful to you?

Other answers

Hi! Yes, definitely. There's a bright future for this career in our out of the Philippines. UX nowadays make or break a product. Technology and interaction evolves, and this field goes with it - so don't worry about growth. If I would start again from nothing, I would study a specific website/application - research on how users use it and how I can improve it. This study will then be part of my portfolio, which I will use to get some mini-design job (you can actually study UX by designing since you are familiar with design tools). As for the coding, it has been very helpful. I would not say it is required, but it is ideal to have first-hand knowledge. Imagine: you would define how an application would work in line with the user experience. You can get crazy and define a "whole new world" process flow and experience. You created something really superb - the problem is that the team that will implement it cannot carry it out in terms of the technology that they are using (although this is not your problem). But a UX designer (at least in my opinion) is not only confined in user experience, but also in bringing business value. UX is very broad, if you would want to ask more, I'll be happy to answer based on my experience here in HP Philippines.

Mar Kevin Cayabyab

There are many events (this 2014) on UX.  We at http://usabilityphilippines.com have regular meetups where you can network with different industry veterans.   There are also training workshops done by http://pwdo.org and UXMNL. UX is a very promising field. There's a lot of interest in it and companies are realizing the value of having UX practitioners in companies.  I work full-time  at  OLX ( also known as Sulit - http://olx.ph) and we created a separate UX department to initially introduce and embed design thinking in our company.

Ely Apao

With such intense competition amongst start-ups, UX has become one of the key factors in making or breaking new (fan) following. Therefore it doesn't matter where you are - become a guru and you'll be head hunted.

Z. Ali

Related Q & A:

Just Added Q & A:

Find solution

For every problem there is a solution! Proved by Solucija.

  • Got an issue and looking for advice?

  • Ask Solucija to search every corner of the Web for help.

  • Get workable solutions and helpful tips in a moment.

Just ask Solucija about an issue you face and immediately get a list of ready solutions, answers and tips from other Internet users. We always provide the most suitable and complete answer to your question at the top, along with a few good alternatives below.