Sarrah Vesselov is UX Lead at GitLab, an online git repository manager that allows people and businesses to manage projects as they change over time. GitLab is a way for developers, managers, developers, and designers to manage work together. Sarrah explains that UI (user interface) is the tangible thing you see. It is about the structure, such as wireframes. Her focus within that UI is the UX (user experience). It is her job to evaluate that and ensure that it is the best experience possible. A wireframe is very base level blocking out, such as the structure of a house. A poor user experience is walking into a house and running into a couch, or not being able to reach a window. As UX Lead, Sarrah's main focus is keeping an overview view of everything. What are most important initiatives and the research being done to back up the decision making. She works with product managers to understand what users need. She does get into the design, and also even jumps into the code, since she has a background in development too. But overall, she is steering the ship, and not getting stuck in the minutiae. Sarrah says design is a science. You make an assumption about the user and your job is to prove yourself wrong and identify things you didn't think about. The use of color, typography, and spacing. Those things are very scientific. Where you put them relate to people and affect what they will do. It is much less about emotion and feeling. Sarrah grew up in Boston. She grew up in a time when women were not supposed to have careers. Early on she got into art and drawing. She had a math learning disability called dyscalculia. (She didn't realize it until second year of college.) She has a hard time holding numbers in her head. She does math with pen and paper. Numbers are not concrete for her. So before she knew she had this issue, she thought she was just dumb. People around her said it was okay because she was a girl, and that girls were bad at math. She did computer animation in college (International Academy of Design). She liked art and drawing. But she wanted to push herself despite her math learning disability. She didn't want to be defined by the disability and succumb to the stereotype of girls not being good a math. And she also realized that it would be a better career choice. After that, as she was creating her design portfolio, she came across web development, and focused in that for her career. Sarrah also has an MBA from American InterContinental University. Sarrah is Director for Women Who Code in Tampa and the Chapter Leader for Girl Develop It in Tampa. Women Who Code caters for folks who are in mid-level career. Helping people to push into that mid to senior level, and staying there. Girl Develop It helps folks changing careers and recent graduates. They put together low-cost or free classes (scholarships) in software development. She was also a facilitator for Girls Who Code. While Girl Develop It is for adults, Girls Who Code is for younger girls, who are at risk of losing interest in STEM fields. Visit stemdiversitypodcast.com.
