Instructor Profile: Paavan Buddhev
Tell us a little about yourself and your current work outside of Experience Haus?
I’ve just started as the Design Lead at Ffern, after 5 years of working as a Senior Digital Product Designer at AND Digital, an award-winning digital consultancy. At AND I got to work with a huge range of clients, designing interfaces and experiences for them. My last three clients have been a life sciences company that makes specialist DNA sequencers, an electric car subscription startup and a contemporary art gallery group!
Outside of working and teaching design, I love gardening and doing magic tricks (I occasionally work as a magician and perform at weddings and parties!)
Did you have a specific goal you wanted to achieve before you started teaching at Experience Haus? Do you think your time here so far has kept you on the right track?
My main goal has been to have fun and help people feel more confident when using Figma. I like to think that I’ve managed to stay on track!
What is your teaching philosophy?
I’ve got three parts to this.
Part 1: you only learn by doing so it’s important to get stuck in straight away. Design theory and principles can come alter after we’ve covered how to make something.
Part 2: you remember and retain information if you have fun while learning! (Hence the cheesy pop music that’s playing anytime anyone enters my classroom!)
Part 3 (this one’s a cliché): There are no silly questions. My teaching classroom is a safe space for people to cock up and forget things as many times as they need.
What do you enjoy most about teaching at Experience Haus?
Meeting such a variety of people. Because I teach UI with Figma classes a lot of my students have come from different disciplines, both in and out of design. I’ve taught Figma to architects, accountants, animators…and often learn tons from each student while doing so.
How would you describe your dream classroom?
I’m going to steal another instructor’s answer but definitely a laptop that connects to the screen first time!
Where do you see yourself in 5 years?
I honestly have no idea (much to the annoyance of my career coach at work). Hopefully I’ll have a slightly bigger garden and be growing more veg than I’m able to right now.
How do you keep up to date with your industry and the courses you teach?
I’m fortunate to have lots of friends in London who work as UX designers in different companies, so I get to keep up to date just by going for drinks with them and sharing memes on our Whatsapp group. I also religiously tune into the Figma feature releases to make sure I can share what’s new with my colleagues and Hausmates.
