From grime to UX: how a chat outside a trainer shop changed my career

Since searching for a new role I've been thinking about how I actually got “into” UX. I really think I can trace it back to a chance conversion outside a trainer shop (Gloria’s) off Brick Lane, East London, in 2004.

I was talking about Nike Air Huaraches, the hi-tops with the strap — their design, how i’d seen MC’s in RWD mag wear them, and how I was going to spend my next student loan on a pair — when a part-time uni lecturer (who also led youth culture research for Nike) overheard the convo and joined in. Before long, we were deep in a chat about grime, identity, and this new, raw genre of music, called Grime.

That conversation led to my first experience of contributing to a culture report for Nike, and led to lots more cultural insight opportunities with them. I didn’t know it then, but I was introducing myself to user research: listening closely, documenting the interesting bits, and feeding them back to a stakeholder.

Picture of Gloria’s shop front, this was off Bricklane in the creative hotbed of Whitechapel in the 2000’s.

From there, I worked with youth marketing agencies on ad-hoc research projects, including work on my own streetwear brand at the time, 4LoveandMoney. On the surface, it was about trends — but underneath, it was always about understanding people.

A lot of this happened as a backdrop to my day jobs in reprographics, corporate graphic design and operations - Co-running print rooms, delivering designs to tight brand guidelines and managing complex workflows. This is where I got unknowingly interested in service design.

Out of boredom, I began to optimise the internal processes, led the customisation of a new digital print order flow, and saw first hand how iterative changes could lead to big improvements. This was my first experience of working on a post-live service, gathering feedback and data to make changes, and I didn’t even know it.

That’s when I started to research what other ex-uni friends were doing, and found UX — a space where I saw research, systems thinking, and design come together. I formalised my skillset with a bootcamp course, which was a journey in itself, and something I plan to write about.

I then took what I thought were my first “proper” steps into UX. Turns out I'd been running that road for more than a minute already.