Meet Grzegorz Musiał, our UX/UI Designer! He started working with Julia at our company a year ago. Now the design team counts four experts. How is it changing and what is he doing now? All the answers, and more, you can find in My Applover Path’s interview!

Thank you for finding time for this little interview. We know how busy you are! Let’s start with an easy question — how did you get a job at Applover?

At some point, I decided that the adventure with my previous job should end. I contacted a few companies whose job offers, their portfolio, and what’s very important for me as a designer, their branding impressed me. Following these criteria, one of the companies was Applover.

The next day, the HR team (Ania to be exact) contacted me. The recruitment took about a week and a half along with the recruitment task and review. After a month, I met for the first time in the office in Wrocław with the whole team!

Why have you chosen a design career?

I would say that this career has chosen me. I was always interested in the creative industry. At the age of 12, I found a Photoshop tutorial on YouTube that showed how to do a photomanipulation related to space and planets. I thought it was effortless and surprising to be able to impress someone if I learned something like that. Tutorial after tutorial, I started to explore more and more, step by step, to get specific results.

The next thing was hearing on TV that a free Photoshop tutorial for retouching photos was included in some magazine. So I asked my dad to buy it for me because I would like to try it. I remember he wasn’t sure why I needed it, but he agreed, and in my free time after school, I was already doing more photo retouching.

And so, day after day, I learned new things, started to present something in feedback groups, and got in touch with other designers (we are still in touch 10 years later!). After a few years of working for fun, I found someone who offered to pay me for it, and I, a 14-year-old boy, still didn’t know how to go about it – whether someone would cheat me or why I should get money for something that, in my opinion, wasn’t a job. In retrospect, I smile. Those were times when I would rather have someone tell me if it’s nice and give me some feedback rather than give me money. Still, I decided that I would try to do something for money, and so I started to get orders. One after another, after another… And so, after time, for 5 years on an old laptop, I gained years of experience and learned from my mistakes.

What does your day-to-day work look like?

We always start the day with a daily meeting. Taking advantage of the fact that it is summer and the light is earlier, I try to get up around 6 a.m. so that I can do something before we start meetings. 7 a.m. is also good in terms of peace because it’s an hour when very few people are still working. Slack is silent and you can just focus.

You are a young designer with various experiences in this field so far. From your perspective, what is the most important thing that you have managed to do professionally up to today?

The most important thing was to realize how I could test my work. For as long as I can remember, I’ve wanted to be better, but compared to someone else. At this point, I feel like a one-man army and I try to improve my skills, what I have to offer from project to project, and analyze every mistake I make so I can avoid them in the future. I focus on taking care of myself and my head. I think, in retrospect, that was the most important thing I learned. We will never be the best in the world, and we are not competitors, so let us not try to outdo each other by force, and let us not fight.

What tools do you use in your work as a UX/UI designer?

Do you have any plans or challenges that you await in the near future?

Soon, I would like to focus on helping and training designers, passing on my knowledge, and practicing patience. I would also like to focus on improving the quality of things I’m not entirely happy with in my day-to-day work. Designers should learn to respect their time and their work and not be used by people who will kill their passion very quickly. What I want most of all is for the people I work with, whom I “mentor”, to avoid the mistakes that I made on my way… probably all of them.

Do you have any advice for people who want to start their career as UX/UI Designers? Maybe you can share your favorite knowledge sources?

I used to think there was a perfect path that if everyone walked it, there was no chance they would fail. To be honest, there is no perfect path. The easiest way is to find a mentor who will analyze you and match your skills, advantages and disadvantages, pros and cons, with the right steps to make up for your shortcomings. This is one of the few ways that is almost guaranteed to succeed, but it is also the most expensive training option, and many people at the beginning of their journey simply won’t be able to afford it. 

Is it worth investing in courses and which ones? I think it’s not worth investing in courses unless you are sure that the person running the course is the person you would personally like to learn from. From my perspective, if I were to spend money on a course, it would be Tom Bishop’s course. Not because he has many positive reviews, but because I know Tom’s work and quality, and I would like to learn something from him.

There is plenty of knowledge on the internet, from Instagram to articles on Medium, UX Planet, etc., available for free. The question is whether the designer will survive this attempt to look for his flaws, correct them, and constantly fight to be better. It will be the most difficult, but also the best course – self-development.

You can follow Grzegorz’s Dribbble profile for more design application inspirations!

Become the UX/UI Designer

If you’re looking for a place where you’d like to grow as a UX/UI Designer, keep checking Applover’s Full-Stack Digital Agency Careers Page! We start new recruitments regularly due to our company growth. We might need someone like you right now.