Oliver Schwaiger

Where are you from and/or where are you based as a Memorisely student?

🇦🇹 Vienna, Austria

What inspired you to pursue UX/UI and become a designer?

I started my career as a graphic designer in an advertising agency, mainly working on print campaigns. Since the scope of this work as well as the environment was a bit off the direction I wanted to develop in, I started building an app with friends and soon jumped from startup to startup as a UX/UI designer. Although I already loved working in the field at this point, I became even more excited when I met the person I now call my girlfriend. Since she’s doing the same, we always challenge each other and my passion for UX/UI has grown with each passing day.

Which Bootcamp did you choose to enroll in, and why?

I decided to do the Accessibility Bootcamp as designing inclusive should have a significantly higher standard in our daily work and I don't feel fit enough in this area yet. Apart from the fact that it is a moral obligation for me, it’s a super exciting topic and I also attach great importance to it in terms of enlightenment.

What's it like to be a student in Memorisely's virtual classroom?

It’s amazing to participate in online classes together with so many different people sharing a similar mindset when it comes to accessibility. Getting to know those people, talking to them, learning from their past experiences, and just having a wonderful knowledge transfer is awesome. Other than that the course and its tools were set up really well structured. Especially having some nice prep tasks to engage with even before the course has officially started.

What has been your favorite part of Bootcamp so far? What's one learning that has surprised you in Bootcamp?

Besides being surrounded by all these great people within the class, I really enjoyed that we were taught how to tackle this topic within the company to develop better and inclusive products. Often people have a lot of competence and experience but do not know how to start the conversation, to whom to reach out, or which step to take first.

What is the biggest challenge you face learning UX/UI Design?

I think it's very difficult to switch our language so that we don't communicate our assumptions as facts, but actually use terms like "assume" or "guess" more often. Furthermore knowing that we are biased is pretty easy but thinking about it in the right moments is really challenging.

What does a typical day look like for you as a student?

Well, to figure out when a day starts and ends is already pretty tricky. For some reason I am both an early bird and a night owl 😅. Anyways getting up around 6:30am I usually tend to take a nice long walk in some of the parks close by.

Then I’ll open up my mac and check the calendar to find the few slots without meetings to have some time to work. 🙃 Most of the time it’s super easy for me to dive into my work so nothing distracts me. Spotify does help a lot though. Shuffling my favorite playlists and here we go.

At lunch I tend to also go for a walk and take some time to cool down my brain a little.

Continuing the same procedure in the afternoon, working on design systems, lots of alignments with the engineers till … “oh wow already bootcamp time”. Grabbing myself something to drink and some snacks cause my brain needs to be on fire and stay focused a little longer.

After class I feel great because my brain soaked up so many fantastic new things. Then I wind down by watching some Netflix or listening to a good podcast.

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What is your current workspace setup?

In the Kununu office we use flex desks where each is set up with 2 big screens where i can easily plug in all my devices via a single USB-C.

Working from home I also have an additional screen but since the apartment is prettty small and shared with my girlfriend I sometimes have to flee into the bedroom so that we don’t interfere with one another when having calls at the same time.

What are your go-to or "must have" apps?

• Figma and several plugins (all ux-ui related & illustrations)

• Spotify (to survive)

• Slack (communication)

• Toggl (time tracking)

• Notion (documentation & checklists)

• Some Sprint-related task manager (Jira, Monday.com, Asana, …)

• Storybook (Dev-Support, Documentation, QA)

• Miro (Workshops, Onboardings)

• RightFont (Typeface Management)

• After Effects (Motion Design)

• Twitter (to stay on track)

• Kptn Cook (Lunch & Dinner 🧑‍🍳)

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What (digital or physical) product recently blew your socks off?

Figma Tokens Plugin from @six7. It’s just such a powerful plugin and saves so much time when used on the right projects. I never thought that this would give me the superpowers that I’ve always dreamed of. Now working on design systems, especially when starting one from scratch I feel like a superhero.

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What tunes do you listen to while designing?

There was a time when I felt really safe to just reply "basically about anything you don't want" but I guess the world has moved on pretty quickly in terms of music and what our ears are capable of. Therefore let’s say almost everything, but mostly niche music.

Let's connect on Spotify. 🤘

Share three pieces of advice for fellow and/or future students?

1. Judge less. This should count not only for your work life but also in private. If everybody would judge less, we could focus on celebrating our differences. Knowledge transfer would happen faster due to less anxiety of being judged for ones opinion. Failure would become a well known and necessary part of our life – imagine where this lack of fear could lead us to.
2. Continue to learn. Besides the wonderful effects of reducing the chance to get Alzheimer's, keeping our brain active and learning new things will get easier and easier the more we practice it. When you feel like there is no time to learn new things, be bold and just block it in your calendar.
3. Connect with your idols. Whoever your big role models might be, why not get in touch with them. Just think about how they could help you if you just ask. It is not uncommon to get great feedback.

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