Ep 4 Farai Madzima | Designing user experiences with customers in mind, overcoming setbacks, and tech in Africa

Behind The Design

09/26/19 • 44 min

This 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://faraimadzima.com

https://pixelup.co.za

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

09/26/19 • 44 min