I was born and raised in Taiwan. Most of my knowledge in the UX field is from materials translated from western countries or in English, e.g. books, websites, podcasts, blogs and online articles. However, only after I moved to Singapore and worked with people from all the different countries, can I gradually realize some differences behind each individual.
The learnings are from my personal experience. The last thing I want to do is to strengthen the stereotypes according to the group the person belongs to. Stereotypes do help people save cognitive effort and enable efficient interactions. However, we should always remind ourselves not to make judgements only rely on stereotypes. A better approach is prioritizing the actions a person takes over the stereotypes generated by the group this person belongs to.
I want to share a few differences I learned from my journey so far:
Culture value difference
Life experience & Education
I noticed that in many of these conversations, people have self-doubt and anxiety, especially when the conversation is around entering or switching to UXR.
Growing up in Asia, at any stage of my education, every question seems to have a standard specific right answer. That forms the idea that there is “the answer” to all the questions (which in reality is usually not true). Many of us carry a heavy expectation from the society, family, peers, and people around us. When we try to change or make an unusual decision, we stress to handle the question from others.
Compared to the western way of education, at least from the movie and TV, children are encouraged to explore what they like or dislike to do, what they want to be when they grow up, and the answer can change at different stages.
Being humble VS Expressing self
In my society, people are taught to be humble. Usually when parents or teachers give a person “feedback”, we expect that means there’s something that he can improve (or he did wrong). What he did was not perfect. When receiving compliments, we see role models in the society being shy and some associate the good results to others’ contribution. We also see that people are uncomfortable with disagreement and may turn to be defensive. This might show the influence from collectivism. Traditionally, we emphasize group over individual.
On the contrary, it seems to me that in a pro western organization, people are encouraged to share their opinions, even if the opinion isn’t supportive to others’ ideas. In meetings, sharing one’s opinions, thoughts, ideas, concerns is better than not saying anything. This echoes back to the different education styles and life experience too.
Aware of the difference and potential impact
Here I do not intend to judge which way is better or worse but to be aware of the differences and the potential pros and cons caused by the differences. An example I shared in many conversations is, imagining there are two candidates applying for the same role. Both have the same level of capability and skills. One is comfortably and confidently explaining how his experience can add value to the new team, another has the self-doubt and worrying that he didn’t reply with “the right answer”, how these differences may influence the result of the interview?
Ideas for practicing adjustments
You don’t need to force yourself to change. You just need to be aware of the differences and perform in a way that you’re comfortable with. Here are some of the ideas for your reference:
Referring to interview examples on platforms like youtube
Finding a few examples that you take as good examples
Identifying points that you’d like to adapt to and you’re comfortable with
Practicing with materials that you’re familiar with, e.g. your portfolio or resume
Recording while practicing, observing your voice, face expression, and gesture, etc.
Reaching out to mentors and asking for feedback
With everything going online, reminding yourself to look at the camera mounted on the laptop or PC. Training yourself to be comfortable and used to look at the camera and have that eye contact.
Where we came from makes us who we are today. But today is just the starting point, bringing us to what we want to be. It’s not an easy path for a shy person to be able to express oneself confidently. It can cause lots of anxiety too. Be aware of the emotional stress, but don’t let it affect you too much. Practice helps too. When you can feel the anxiety, accept the emotional reaction, and convince yourself that it’s ok to feel that way, you’ll know you handle it well. That means you gain the muscle from practice and become stronger.
Learnings form 50+ mentorship practice in 2022
In the year of 2022 I took time talking to people who are interested in topics around Product, Design, Research, Career, Asia, etc. After 50+ conversations, I want to write down what I learned from these conversations.
