As of last Friday I have been unemployed. I worked at Red Hat as an intern/contractor for almost a year, and unfortunately, my time was up at the end of the Fiscal Year. I loved my job, and I loved the team I worked with. Although it may seem upsetting that I am now jobless, I feel surprisingly relieved. Relieved in the sense that I can finally have the time to focus on exactly what I want out of my career. As you can see, this has been a problem. I have been out of school for almost a year, and I still had no idea exactly what I wanted to do— until today.

I’m a designer. I specialize in designing for the web. I know that. When I graduated last May, I knew I wanted to be a User Experience Designer. I can look at almost any web page, and think of a way to make it better. Am I a graphic designer? No. Am I a developer? No. Would I eventually like to learn how to be those things? Yeah, I would— but one step at a time, please.

I’m definitely late in the game when it comes to realizing there are MANY different careers when it comes to User Experience. Visual designers, Interface designers, Information Architects, etc. I know I’m not all of those things. I know I can’t start right out of college and be a lead designer at a company. So when someone asks me what I do… what the hell am I supposed to tell them?

For the past week I have been dabbling with design, creating different projects for myself to implement into a beautiful visual piece of art on Photoshop. I guess this was me taking a stab at becoming a Visual Designer. I realized after a phone interview with a startup company that I’m NOT really a Visual Designer. I’m not a graphic artist. I can’t do a whole lot of cool things with Photoshop, just basic things. I’m not saying I will never be, but for now I need to become even greater at what I already know.

I had an epiphany today when I listened to a presentation by Leah Buley from Adaptive Path. I suggest every designer to take 30 minutes or so to listen/view this presentation, “How to be a UX Team of One” below

UX Team Of One @ IA Summit 2008

If you don’t have 30 minutes, then watch the video below. I also found this on Leah’s blog. It’s a minute and a half short video on what I’m going to base my entire future career around.

This is something I’ve already had previous experience in, and I loved it. I guess I thought that in order to get a full-time career in web design I had to be able to do it all— including the development part (shutters). These resources have taught me differently. I can do exactly what I’ve always wanted to do.

After being so inspired, I decided if I really want to take this seriously, I need to practice every day. I “google’d” some of the best tools to use for wireframing, and whatd’ya know, Leah’s name pops up again with her suggestions. So I went out and bought them. This lady must be pure design genius. I would seriously love to meet her one day.

Leah, if you read this, I just want to tell you thanks, from a beginning designer trying to make her mark in the web world.