It's been close to a year and a bit since I stepped off that Emirates flight at Melbourne Airport on August 9th, and what a journey it's been so far! This move was the next chapter in a design career that's taken me from India's hybrid developer-designer world to Dubai's massive digital transformations. I thought I'd take some time to log my journey here so far.
The journey until Dubai
Back in India, I was that classic hybrid part-developer, part-designer. You know the type: wrestling with front-end code one day, crafting user interfaces the next. It was the era where being a "full-stack designer" meant you could code your own designs and fix the UI when it inevitably broke.
Moving to Emirates in Dubai changed everything. Suddenly I was part of the massive Empact digital transformation, designing systems for 50 million passengers annually. But here's the thing, as we approached towards delivery phase, I found myself longing for something more design focused. I was happy about my technical foundation, but my heart was pulling toward pure design craft.
After much research, I figured out that UAE didn't have the design education options I was looking for. Right around this time, Mohan Shanmugarajah, who was my dear mentor at Emirates, was planning to relocate to Australia and suggested to research about the design scene there. So I started researching and after several weeks of validation, I made the leap to choosing Australia, as a purely career-focused destination, chasing my dream of becoming a well-rounded designer who could add value through a scalable lens.
The next few weeks to months, weren't straghtforward as I'd hoped. I still had to jump over several hoops, working out which visa to apply, how to support myself and my family in India along with finding time to balance the design-search was still all to account for. It started to feel overwhelming but I continued to chip away at things one at a time.
Flying to Australia
Just when university research, visa application and working out the timelines was all falling in place at Dubai. I reached out to Mohan again. He had settled down by this time and even visited us once after his move. We kept in touch and our Skype calls became these brilliant timezone juggling sessions, him catching up during his late evenings while I was starting my day in Dubai mornings with coffee.
During one of our calls, Mohan presented an opportunity, he was architecting FastTrack360's entire digital cloud transformation in Melbourne and suggested to join the team. This was perfect oppurnutity, I'd have a stable foundation in Australia contributing to FastTrack's product goals, while I can determine my next career steps in Australia.
The trust he showed was incredible. Mohan understands digital transformation from the ground up, and knowing he was leading the technical strategy made the decision easy. I could continue doing what I am good at, UX engineering, while I continue to search for my design evolution. The visas came through, I packed up my bags, said goodbye to my friends and colleagues at Emirates for grateful time there. I have been dearly missing them ever since.
The university reality check
After settling down in Melbourne, I'd visited Monash, RMIT, and Swinburne, all impressive institutions with good design programs. But sitting in those information sessions, I realised something, after years of hands-on transformation work, rigid fulltime curricula felt like taking a step backward and I also couldn't afford it.
Instead my research also helped me to craft my own design education, picking courses and certifications that align with immediate application at work. In one of those session, the one of the professors suggested an idea along the same lines. Thats when it occurred to me to break down my upskilling approach and do it small doses of different subjects, one at a time. Why spend 2-3 years in theory when I can learn by doing.
What's next: design delivery and human-centred methods
The plan is crystallising around two areas: mastering design delivery and diving deep into qualitative research methods.
On design delivery, I'm moving beyond pretty interfaces to understanding how design decisions impact business outcomes. FastTrack360's transformation is a good testing ground. I'm learning to present design rationale, measure impact, and iterate based on real user feedback.
On qualitative methods, this is where I'm most excited. User interviews, usability testing, journey mapping, the human side of design that you can't learn from the timeline-focused delivery side. Understanding not just what users do, but why they do it.
My employers here have been incredibly supportive of this learning-while-doing approach. Researching interaction design principles in the morning and implementing them in real interfaces by afternoon has been a good rhythm.
Australia: my design university
Two years in, and Australia's workplace community has been everything I hoped for. Onus to design, UX meetups, there's this wonderful focus on craft over speed that feels like exactly what I needed after my Dubai's racing pace. This slowing down in engineering and dedicating time towards design has been really helpful so far.
The coffee and pub culture has been real, but more importantly, I have been using design thinking ever so more than I with my previous projects.
From hybrid developer-designer in India to transformation UX engineer in Dubai, and now focused design practitioner in Melbourne, each step has built on the last one. Sometimes the best career moves are the ones that scare you just enough to keep you sharp.
Cheers to new chapters!