“My name is Oluwatobi Taiwo. I’m a graduate of Law and a serving corps member. I’m a lover of books, movies, and music. Living in Africa is very challenging because getting access to the necessary resources can be daunting.
I’m glad that despite the different challenges faced by techies in Africa, the tech sector is still rapidly growing and as more talent becomes available, more companies will be willing to invest here. This made me realize that if I position myself as a skilled tech talent, some of those opportunities would be available to me. So, I decided to build capacity in design. However the quality courses were expensive. My major challenges were slow learning, imposter syndrome, faulty laptop and limited access to online courses. I compared myself with people who were more experienced than me and I forgot that I was a newbie. I wanted to learn everything at once and that’s impossible. This comparison made me lose confidence in myself. To get rid of this lack of confidence, I made a resolve to dedicate time to constantly improve my skills.
It was about this time that I found out about the I4G Student Build Studygroup program via She Code Africa and I decided to participate in the program because I knew I wasn’t going to get better at design on my own and I needed guidance. The program gave me access to a Coursera scholarship and the courses really helped me understand UX Design a lot more. I became more confident and started sharing my designs on Dribbble.
This program improved my design thinking process and I got better at creating design case studies.Now, I believe I can do anything if I put my mind to it and I’ve also learned to enjoy my learning journey. I’ve realized that exploring a design career path in tech was not a bad decision. I am more enthusiastic about design and I’m continuously learning something new.
I designed an e-commerce website for a company and created a case study showing my design process. The case study included my sketches, user flow, user persona, low and high fidelity wireframes. I look back at this capstone project and I am intensely proud of myself.
Regardless of the career path of a tech newbie, I4G is a great place to learn and improve skills. You get for free, valuable resources that many pay for and it’s totally worth it.”