Student Success Story: Dr Shaimaa Osman
Shaimaa completed our 12-week full-time UX/UI Career Development Bootcamp in April 2023. She now works as a contract designer for Noble Panacea and has recently started as a Health-tech Intern at Wellx.
We caught up with her recently to see how the course helped her achieve her goals and any pearls of wisdom for any budding product or UX/UI designers.
Tell us a bit more about what you were doing before you decided to pivot into design?
I was working as a junior doctor at a large teaching hospital in Devon. I was already locuming and not working full-time to make time for remote design learning and flexible traveling.
How was training at Experience Haus different from other providers?
It was in-person and surrounded by designers I knew I would learn a lot from.
What was the most challenging part of your learning experience?
The most challenging part was the time constraints of the project! Our first two projects were only 1-2 weeks long, meaning the end-to-end design was intense but a good challenge nonetheless to prepare me for real-world design sprints.
Job Hunting & Your New Role
Where is your new job and what is your role?
I’m a contract designer for Noble Panacea and a Health-tech intern at Wellx.
Where do you work?
It’s a hybrid role but the Noble Panacea offices are in Bermondsey.
How did you find the job search process after you finished the course?
It was a challenge for sure! I set up so many calls with designers and founders, making sure to expand my digital health network. I went through many rounds of interview stages and challenges/tasks. At times, it felt like a full-time job!
What did a typical working day look like for you 2 years ago?
I would start with morning ward rounds and review patients alongside the consultant and fellow medics. Ordering scans, putting in lines, taking blood, reviewing test results and speaking to family members. My evenings might be clerking patients in, which meant seeing patients who had been referred to the medical team from the emergency department. It really depended on if I was on call, on a day or night shift, but those were my general tasks.
What does a typical working day look like for you now?
I work 3 days a week on Noble Panacea, and twice a week on Wellx.
A typical Noble Panacea day may be heading into the Bermondsey office for 9am and working on refining the UI design. I also have meetings with the Dubai-based creative team. Lunch with friends by London Bridge and then back to work! My work day ends at 6pm.
My health-tech internship involves researching and designing the company AI health chatbot. A typical Wellx day is an early start with a morning huddle for any updates from the wider company team. Then I collaborate with my data science colleague breaking down the tasks for the day using miro as a great collaboration tool. Again, a few meetings and check-ins. The role is deliverables focused so I plan my time accordingly. It’s a really interesting part of the business to work on.
What are your top 3 tips for preparing for a design interview?
- Practice talking through your case studies
- Set up calls with more senior designers and ask them about their experience. Have a google doc of questions and their answers, and almost like an interview brain dump!
- Every interview experience is you growing as a designer!
What advice do you have for anyone breaking into the industry? Is there anything you wish you’d known when you were first starting out?
The most important thing is how you pitch yourself to stand out as the industry is very competitive and your portfolio and story need to shine through. The earlier you can think about how you can do that, the better!
I’d say the earlier you make the jump, the easier it’ll be, if it’s something you’ve been thinking about for a while. I can’t believe how far I’ve come since I decided to pack my bags and move to London from Devon…and I fully stand by the decision!
Build as wide a design network as possible, as you never know what opportunities may come from that. The same goes for the job search, especially early on in your career. I wouldn’t rely on that one connection or that one job you applied for, but rather cast your net wide. I would also think about how you can use what you learnt in your own projects. For example, the bootcamp taught me so much that I can bring into my own small art brand. Not just for finding a job – you’ve learnt incredibly useful life skills around user experience!
Get in touch with Shaimaa
linkedin.com/in/dr-shaimaa-osman
