Ep 4 Farai Madzima | Designing user experiences with customers in mind, overcoming setbacks, and tech in Africa
Release Date: 09/26/2019
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Behind The Design Welcome to Season 4
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Welcome to season 4 of Behind The Design.
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S3 Ep 7 Studio Lessons Season Recap
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Ep 5 Jomo Tariku | Talking diversity in African creativity, underrepresentation in design and being good enough to interpret our own culture
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info_outlineThis is episode 4 where I am joined by user interaction designer and tech conference organiser Farai Madzima.
ABOUT FARAI: Farai Madzima is a UX Lead at Shopify in Ottawa, Canada. Born in Zimbabwe, Farai has spent the last 14 years helping to design and build products and teams in the UK, South Africa and Canada. He is the organiser of Pixel Up!, a series of UX and design conferences and meetups in South Africa created to connect designers and developers in Africa with their peers around the world.
We talk about:
- What is UX design and why it matters to business
- Why product and service creators need to see the product and user experience from the customer’s perspective
- The increasing effect that technologies such as voice activated platforms will have on businesses and the user experience and how to prepare for the change
- His talk ‘Can Being African Make You A Bad Designer?’ and how it explores the understanding of culture and how that shows up in us at work
- The lessons learnt from being fired from one of his first jobs and how the experience helped him to grow into leadership
- Managing teams where age differences and cultural expectations could be an issue
- His thoughts on the future of Africa’s tech industries
Links and resources mentioned in this episode
Andela - https://andela.com
Udemy online courses - https://www.udemy.com
Figma - https://www.figma.com/africa/
forloop - https://forloop.africa
Udacity courses - https://www.udacity.com
Interaction Design Foundation (IDF) - https://www.interaction-design.org
Can Being African Make You A Bad Designer? - https://interaction18.ixda.org/program/talk-can-being-african-make-you-a-bad-designer----cultural-bias-in-design-madzima-farai/
Where you can go to find out more about Farai
https://www.linkedin.com/in/farai/
Twitter: @farai_uxguy
Get the full show notes at: www.atelier55design.com/podcast
Behind the Design is brought to you by atelier 55