From Tech Support to UX Research

Hi There! I am Edima, a UX Researcher who started his journey helping colleagues fix network cables.

edima inwang cartoon image

My Story

I have always been a creative person. At the age of 5, I started drawing pictures of Superman and Voltron on my notebooks. At the age of 8, I was adding stories to my drawings. When I was 10, I designed my first comic strip. At 12, I was writing poetry and at the age of 13, I was writing songs.

After my BSc in a University in Nigeria, I started writing computer programmes for friends using C language. I later got a job fixing Acer computers where I learnt the fine art of customer service. While working with Acer laptops and mainframes, I was able to learn Java, HTML and CSS. I also learned networking using using videos and study labs from Cisco.

After a few years, I went to work in a security company. Tracking cell towers and documenting policies helped me learn organisation, documentation and planning. 

I got so good at those that I was asked to train others and make presentations to potential clients. That was how I refined my presentation skills and my pitches.

I worked for a non-profit organisation afterwards where I quickly understood that managing volunteers was quite different from managing paid staff. There, I developed the ability to spot talent quickly so I could train and manage my teams more efficiently. I also had the opportunity of learning digital media production (video editing & video streaming). I started taking my creativity seriously by learning visual design.

A few courses with The Interaction Design Foudation did not make me an expert in Design Thinking, but it opened a huge door of opportunities for me and started me on my User Experience journey.

Companies like Accenture and Capgemini influenced my thinking from this point on.

From their newsletters and whitepapers I read about concepts like customer experience, design thinking, business process management, outsourcing, enterprise management, business intelligence, etc.

I put all these experiences together when we built a company we called Fifthware. We offered managed IT services, mobile and web application design, with a focus on customer experience, design and digital marketing.

Working with business owners and executives to drive growth has taught me that the best way to achieve business objectives is through a marriage between design and technology.

Today, I leverage on these experiences to help individuals and businesses identify user needs and harness digital transformation and design thinking principles to increase productivity.

A Strategic Designer, Here Are Some of My Skills

I am excellent at identifying user needs, collaborating with cross-functional teams and crafting evidence-based soltions using tools like Figma, CorelDraw, Adobe Suite, Canva, Powerpoint, WordPress, etc.

Some of my best quotes

“The key to making things affordable is design and technology improvements as well as scale.”

–  Elon Musk

“Good design is actually a lot harder to notice than poor design, in part because good designs fit our needs so well that the design is invisible,”

 – Don Norman

“The joy of leadership comes from seeing others achieve more than they thought they were capable of.”

Simon Sinek

“Formal education will make you a living; self-education will make you a fortune.”

–  Jim Rohn