Becky Ferraro: Being an Experience designer
Becky is an experience designer and leader of the Deloitte Digital UK Inclusive Design practice. She works with clients to design more inclusive products and services that have a positive impact on society. Becky also works with large scale organisations to build and embed sustainable inclusive design capability within their teams.
What’s your official job title, and what’s the most straightforward way to explain what you do?
My official job title is a “senior experience designer” and “inclusive design lead”. I conduct diverse research and co design inclusive experiences (both digital and non-digital). I also build and embed inclusive design capability in large organisations.
What does a normal day look like?
A typical day for me will differ depending on the project that I’m on. Within my client facing role I may be planning or conducting research, drawing up customer journeys and screen designs, running workshops with clients or pulling together presentations. Side of desk I’ll be scoping out new projects or building/presenting tools and training with members of the Inclusive Design team.
What's the most enjoyable part of your job?
I love the part of my job where I’m translating all the rich insights from research into new and exciting designs and journeys. Anything that involves coming up with ideas, I’m there! Most recently, it’s also been really enjoyable to be shaping our Inclusive Design strategy and coming up with new ways of working and client offerings.
What did it take to get to where you are today?
Being surrounded by great people, some late evenings and many takeaways. I’ve been fortunate enough to have people around me that share my passion for Inclusive Design. They have provided a great deal of encouragement and motivation to keep going. In order to pursue doing Inclusive Design work almost full time, I along with my colleague Emma dedicated a good chunk of our evenings and weekends to creating a business case and strategy (hence the many takeaways!). But it’s been worth every bite.
What are the main digital tools you could not do without?
Currently I can’t live without Miro. It’s where I do a lot of my early stage thinking and strategic development work which is a big focus right now. (However, I’d love to see it become more accessible so I can use it more broadly).
For design I would say the adobe suite along with sketch/figma or whichever screen design tool I need to use for client. I love having the full adobe suite so that I can build illustrations or create videos.
The less exciting tool that is critical to the job is PowerPoint. This is needed for any presentation that helps us engage with clients, playback research and run inclusive design training.
Any advice for people wanting to do a similar role to you?
If you’re looking to do Inclusive design in any form, the good news is that it’s only going to grow over the coming years. Keep an eye out for specific roles, or companies that would be open to you creating a role once you’ve joined (similar to my approach).
Make sure wherever you go that you’ll be surrounded by people that you can learn from and that those people will motivate and push you to keep building on your skills and knowledge.
And finally, some of the best advice I was given was to be smart with my time. My coach told me to consider my client work, side of desk work and hobbies and that if they all align to the same goal, they will feed each other and cut down the work I needed to do. When I made that switch, everything started to click.
And finally, what do you enjoying doing outside of work?
I love pasta and have taken to making my own from scratch. I really enjoy experimenting with different shaping techniques and recipes. I also design and sell prints with soundwaves embedded in the artwork on Etsy. This allows me to flex my creative muscles with no project
Where can we keep up to date with you?
Linkedin - www.linkedin.com/in/beckyferraro
Instagram -www.instagram.com/bks_prints