Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Anjali D’Souza. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Hi Anjali, thanks for joining us today. Are you able to earn a full-time living from your creative work? If so, can you walk us through your journey and how you made it happen?

Have you been able to earn a full-time living from your creative work?

Yes and 18 months ago I made the jump and went freelance so that I could work on projects that needed an experienced UX Designer to lead it, I wanted to have autonomy in project, choose the type of work I took on and work remotely.

If so, can you walk us through your journey and how you made it happen?

My eagerness to go freelance was because I wasn’t being challenged enough in my full-time role, I wanted more autonomy and the chance to cut my teeth at exciting and actionable projects. I started out my career in a Venture Capitalist, learnt a lot and advocated for design. From there I worked agency side, that is where I learnt how to run fast from making mistakes, being thrown in the deep end into innovative work and working alongside experienced colleagues. At a consultancy, I found the pace of work slow and not dynamic enough for my appetite. Freelance has been a breath of fresh air and as a mature designer, with vast experience and exposure to projects and industries I’m confident in my skill set and my contribution as an expert.

I’m a designer by trade – I studied fashion textiles and worked in print design for a few years, being burnt by the fashion industry and the boom of the tech industry made me look elsewhere where I could combine my discipline of print design with future-forward innovation. I found User Experience Design allows me to focus my design expertise into creating digital products, with a user-centred approach. I enrolled on an immersive User Experience Design course for three months, this is one of the best decisions I’ve ever made – a new fast-paced way of learning, with real-life projects and studying alongside people who had a career behind them.

If not, what were some of the major steps and milestones and do you think you could have sped up the process somehow knowing what you know now?

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

One of my first roles was at a leading advertising agency in London within their Experience Design team, what I learnt there and from my course has set me up in good stead for where I am now. I learnt a lot from the client projects that we worked on as well as through osmosis from my seniors. Since then I’ve been primarily a lead designer placed within an existing team to carry out a project on a piece of work that was recently won, optimise an existing site or product, build out a new feature or create a proof of concept design idea. Often I need to advocate for user experience design within a project, the value it brings to the customer and as a result to the business.

What are you most proud of and what are the main things you want potential clients/followers/fans to know about you/your brand/your work/

From my industry experience so far I feel that I have really added value to the end user through the projects I have taken on, I’ve created meaningful and valuable user experience. I’ve learnt a lot from making mistakes, honing in on my craft, asking questions and working with talented people along the way.

Are there any books, videos, essays or other resources that have significantly impacted your management and entrepreneurial thinking and philosophy?

It would be The Stack World a network for women in business. As a freelance designer who works primarily remotely, I miss the chat of new trends and ideas that I would get from my peers face to face.

A podcast that keeps me company whilst I’m designing on Figma is The Future with Chris Do. He interviews creatives and speaks about his experiences of running a studio, producing work and dealing with clients. His advice and thought pieces really resonate with me especially being a freelancer, looking for new opportunities, delivering my point of view and advocating for myself.

What else should we know about how you took your side hustle and scaled it up into what it is today?

Alongside my day-to-day job I have side hustle in which I teach young people design, I run app design workshops for young people. This was an idea that came to me after I finished my course and heard about the gap in digital skills in the UK. I volunteered at hackathons for kids and decided to approach my local council to ask if I could run app design workshops to show another side to tech and empower young people in the community into STEAM (Science Technology Engineering Arts and Maths). In the worksop we explore what user experience, ask questions, draw design and create digital prototypes. There is more to tech than solely coding, its showing young people that its creative, fun and collaborative.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.anjalidsouza.com
• Instagram: anjalidsouza
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/anjalidsouza/