April 9, 2024
What am I hinting? 😏 You hear it all the time I bet, especially once you start researching other people’s journeys in UX
“How do you know this?”
“You are like a wealth of knowledge. I don’t know where you get all these things from. Wow, you blow my mind.”
Random facts, solutions to every problem, ideas on how to go about a situation, statistics, cultural traditions and overlaps, words that don’t come easily to your mind, you name it. 😎 I have the answers, or most certainly will look for them. That one thing that sparks all that is my curiosity.
Curiosity (from Latin cūriōsitās, from cūriōsus “careful, diligent, curious”, akin to cura “care”) is a quality related to inquisitive thinking such as exploration, investigation, and learning, evident in humans and animals. — wikipedia
Even in the recent conversation at the ADPList event with Don Norman, the importance of curiosity was once again brought up alongside the reason why the design community needs more generalists.
Depending on where you are geopolitically in the world curiosity is either encouraged or hindered. Growing up listening and hanging out with older people than me helped me develop that trait and start creating my database of curiosities. And based on my interests my curiosities have different depths and breadths. But let’s self-analyse and see which industry interests have helped my work as a UX designer. Because after all, it's all about connecting the dots, right?
Languages and Education
I would blame it on the fact that I grew up in a bilingual household. At home, we spoke mostly Bulgarian, but with my grandparents and older relatives, we used only a dialect of Romanian. Lots of relatives made fun of me for not speaking too much but I could understand most of their conversations with the help of context. Not too late after starting school, we began learning English, with rules and listening exercises from cassetophone (yes, I know 😁 even Grammarly doesn’t know what that is). Then I found my superpower! In high school started reading books in English and had my dictionary for words I didn’t know their meaning before encountering them. And later that same habit applied to everything new.
Health and Fitness
From a young age, I learned the importance of having a good physical condition in other to perform well in PE (Physical education) and of course, helping around the house and garden (Balkan parenting 😁). Seeing my family and relatives neglecting their health and fitness, give me a deeper motivation to learn more about nutrition, sleep, working out and wellbeing.
During my student and university years, I spent my free time learning about physical exercise, learned about what is my body type (mesomorph), what kind of exercises best suit me, what foods affect my performance and what routine gives the best results.
Food, Cooking and some aspects of Hospitality
Growing up in a village meant that wanted it or not I had to learn how to take care of and even plant some the veggies and fruits in our garden (potatoes being my favourite 😅). At some point, we also had a donkey, goats, chickens and the occasional pigs for the upcoming holidays (if you know you know).
Cooking was an essential skill to acquire and my mom made sure I attended the “classes” because she knew my brother depended on my learning this survival skill while she was away from home because of work. Do you know how to thicken soup? 😏 Let us know in the comments.
Hospitality was learned from the days when I was helping my mom with her cleaning services. She was doing that for private households but also at one point for a small hotel as well.
Travelling
Growing up in a village as a curious kid means that you will become an explorer. If your love for learning is bigger than the fear of the unknown. Starting from your own and closest grounds, forests, villages, towns and country, to meeting foreigners and ex-pats that spark your curiosity with their tales about foreign lands. Listening to other people's journeys ultimately made me think, plan and research my own. And here I am with the modest list of 8 visited countries so far. Anyone going to Spain in June?
Reading and writing
Journaling started when I got my first diary for one of my birthdays and stopped for quite a long period after that same diary was destroyed by my younger brother. But what I kept doing was writing here and there about events that brought me a higher sense of meaning or looked like synchronicities of some sort.
The book that got me into reading self-help was a book my mom gave me as a teenager. I couldn’t find the English version of it but it would probably translate to: Becoming a woman.
Films and TV series
Similarly to books, movies and TV series are a great part of my curiosity loopholes and pop-culture knowledge. From knowing certain phrases associated with specific TV shows you are kind of part of a smaller club or people around the world with whom you have shared a common experience. From this, I also ended up watching funny movie commentaries and paying attention to how a movie is also made.
Retail and Sales
Loving and experimenting with sports, plus being the most extroverted version of myself during my university years was the perfect combination for me and my part-time job as a Sales Consultant for sports goods in Decathlon. There I learned a lot about how the value and the presentation of the product are more important than the old-school sales tactics of trying to sell anything to a customer. In that environment, I also developed lots of my soft skills and maintained energy levels depending on my work and study schedule.
What are some of your interests and curiosities? I would love to know. ☺️
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P.S. If you want to be part of my curious journey, you can find me on also on Instagram @angelova.nikoleta.design and LinkedIn (Nikoleta Angelova). Don’t forget to include a note on LinkedIn. 😉
Are you struggling with productivity or understanding design decisions? Join me on my YouTube where I explain web design and stream sometimes.
Currently available for collaborations.
