Anuja Chatterjee

I would say my hard work and not giving up, because there are many roadblocks that I faced, but I didn't get phased by them. I tried to improve myself through those roadblocks, and they have been my learning milestones as I went forward. There was a time where I was unemployed and I was kind of losing hope because the market was really bad, and I thought that maybe nobody would be employing me, and I felt very useless. But I did get the advice of not giving up, because the time hasn't run out, and there's always an option to restart. That really helped me, because for my current role that I have, I'm very grateful for it, and that happened because I didn't give up while I was not getting any opportunities.

The career advice would be to not give up, because there was a time where I was unemployed and I was kind of losing hope, because the market was really bad, and I thought that maybe nobody would be employing me, and I felt very useless. But I did get the advice of not giving up, because the time hasn't run out, and there's always an option to restart. That really helped me, because for my current role that I have, I'm very grateful for it, and that happened because I didn't give up while I was not getting any opportunities.

I would say be very intuitive and constantly be open to learning. Learning doesn't stop at school or when you're doing some kind of training. Learning is always something that you have to do to grow and to push yourself forward.

The challenges would be to translate what we as designers and researchers have found to other teams, because they don't think through the empathy lens that we do. We are constantly thinking about the user, we are constantly thinking of how somebody will be using this. It's difficult to translate that to somebody who is in product, who is more engaged in how to launch a product, or somebody who is more invested in coding the design. They are not very aware of how the interactions work, so to make them aware is a big challenge, and that is something that we constantly have to work on. It's not something that we figure out once, so it won't come up again. Every project is different, and it changes all the time. So that's one thing that we're constantly learning and trying to improve.

In terms of work, as well as personal relationships, I think it's very important to have integrity and work towards it, whether at work and even as a person. I try to give that to others as well. Having some integrity is important for me, as well as for people I work with.