Once my children had grown up, I was thinking about what to do with my new freedom. Taking on more jobs as a freelance designer was not the solution.

I was never happy to just get the next job ‘done’. I was always keen to dig deeper. This is why in 2001 I decided to take a one-year full time course as an IT Consultant with 700 hours on network technology to find out how the web works. I never used my skills in network technology afterwards, but computers became my best friends.

During my research and thinking, I came across UX Design and thought, “That’s it!” It’s a development of the Bauhaus philosophy, ‘Form follows function’. I became a huge Bauhaus fan during my BA degree in Visual Communication in 1986 and had the chess game from Josef Hartwig etched in my brain: You see the figures and intuitively you know the function.

In 2019, I enrolled in a part-time postgraduate Interactive Media Practice MA course at Westminster University. I have done my final major project in design systems (Atomic Design) using Figma, after already having made a style guide for the same pharmaceutical company in the past.

I have never regretted my decision to do this course alongside my work as a freelance designer. Prior to starting it, I did things intuitively. Now, I design consciously and can justify it academically. Furthermore, I have found new fields of interest – such as design sprints, coding, and Alexa skills – where I want to dig deeper in the future.