If you’re ever stuck on creating something, think about what you like, and specifically why it inspires you. Being able to adapt and learn new things is the key to thriving. Take a moment to reflect on what you like about an app, it could be the colors, the music, the font, etc. and reflect on why you like it. In this episode, Gabriela Gonjon, an Architect student, talks about how working in startups and creatively using that inspiration to build new products. When you recognize what you enjoy about an app, or website, try to articulate it into words what you enjoy about it. Then use those tips as inspiration for when you design your own creative work. Put your own spin on it, in your own way.
Mentioned in the show:
Amora Brown:
Hello everyone! And welcome back to another episode of Corpartainment. I am your host Amora Brown. And today we are with an architect student named Gabriela Gonjon. Hey Gabriela! Welcome to the show.
Gabriela Gonjon:
Hello! Thanks for having me.
Amora Brown:
Oh, absolutely. Thank you for coming. I wanted to take this time to learn a little bit about your experience studying architecture in school and being a woman entrepreneur. You mentioned that you worked on three startups. So can you talk to us a little bit about balancing that type of lifestyle? I think it be really inspirational for students who are looking to build up their resume while they're in school, but don't really know about how to do that.
Gabriela Gonjon :
Yeah. So I'm actually part of two startups and I am about to be like today or tomorrow, they're going to announce the results of being president of my NOMA chapter, which is the National Organization of Minority Architects. So in my mind, it's like a little startup too, cause it's about like events, emails, trying to deal with people outside of class. So yeah, I would say by the time you get to the point of trying to make your own startups during your academic year career, you'd probably have a resume that's already built with things. For me, I'm at the point where it's like, I really have to start editing things out, but none of them are like jobs that pay me so, well- I mean I have a lot of like, you know, McDonald's random cashier type of jobs, but those aren't as interesting. So, you know, it's like a mix right now.
Gabriela Gonjon:
I'm kind of like, I'm doing things that could be on my resume, but I'm like, it's getting so cluttered right now. And there's certain things that I've done in the past and I want to keep on there. So that whole resume thing, like by the time you get to a startup, you'll have so much to put on there. And so many soft skills, which is the biggest thing that you'll be learning, creating your own startups more so than any technical skills. And that's really what you can bring to the table in terms of what to talk about in your interview. If you're not trying to continue with that startup.
Amora Brown:
Definitely.
Gabriela Gonjon:
You know, forever. If you're trying to like get a real job afterwards,
Amora Brown:
Can you tell us the name of this startup that you're working on? I know you mentioned that it's a think tank where you basically make up ideas based off pop culture and design around it. I'm probably saying that completely wrong, but tell us a little bit about.
Gabriela Gonjon:
Yeah. So one of the startups I'm part of is called ad hoc cooperative. And that is a think tank that specializes in architecture and we care about design, beauty and speculative thinking. And by speculative, it's pretty much kind of like pop culture what's happening now in society and like things about like quarantine. Yeah. So we focus on speculative design and pretty much speculative design is like pop culture, things that are happening right now, such as, you know, what was happening with the black lives matter movement. When people put plywood all over their buildings, what to do with all that plywood subway cars, how those subway cars work with accessibility and quarantine and how people work in quarantine. So those are the things we design about in an architectural perspective.
Amora Brown:
Oh, I love that. What is the second startup that you've been working on?
Gabriela Gonjon:
So the second startup is completely like out of my comfort zone, which was really fun. I have a friend, his name is Devante and he's like really inspirational to me, but he dropped out of my school and he decided to do a bootcamp for computer engineering because he went to school for computer engineering,
Amora Brown:
I worked at a software engineering bootcamp for a couple of years. I can relate to that. He went- he studied there? Awesome.
Gabriela Gonjon:
Yeah, he went there. And I think like within like less than a year, he ended up getting like a $90k+ job. And I was like, wow. And now, now that he has time, he's like, I want to do a startup. And he was like, "Gabby", like, "you can draw". And I was like, yes, I can. "Can You design"? I was like, yeah, I can. And he's like, you want to be a UX designer for us? And I was like okay. So that's how I got it.
Amora Brown:
That is so dope. I love that. And what is the name of this startup again?
Gabriela Gonjon:
So this is called Uplift and it's a platform to sell black beauty products. So like things for hair, makeup, skin, et cetera, just like, so that way it's easier to find that there's no like reason to like filter through- going through like "natural hair", which, you know, all hair is natural or trying to find your skin foundation color. You're like, you know, amazing beauty product.
Amora Brown:
I'm so excited to check that out. So you're going to have your first UX design job. So how are you going to balance architecture work? Are you going to marry those two concepts together? And if so, do you have any idea how?
Gabriela Gonjon:
So for that one, I'm really happy with that one because most of the people on both of these teams are like all students ad hoc cooperative kind of works all year around, but my other startup, they're a little bit more conscious of time management. And so we've decided that we're not going to work during the school year and we're kind of doing slow and steady makes the race.
Amora Brown:
Yeah.
Gabriela Gonjon:
You know, he's not thinking about this, like popping off next year. This is more of like a three to like couple year type of situation, you know? So I don't actually have to worry too much. It's just in my summers and my winter breaks is when I'm working on that.
Amora Brown:
I love the idea of you just being open to opportunity and not being stuck in one mindset. I think that's the future. The future is being able to adapt and being able to learn new things, kind of learn on the spot and teach yourself. So are there some things that you can share with us? The top tips that you've learned when it came to building a new skill, because UX design is going to make you quite a bit more money than when you were working at McDonald's as a cashier. I don't know if you study UX design in school, but if you didn't, I would imagine that you learned it on your own. What would you say is the best way to kind of teach yourself if you're the type that is not used to doing that?
Gabriela Gonjon:
Yeah. So for me, luckily this happened during the summer, like the beginning of the quarantine, I was not getting a job at that time. It was like my first year where I didn't get jobs,, like actual part-time jobs during the breaks. I had time. Like I felt like I had time, you know, I'm already like really used to the Adobe systems, like all the Adobe products, because I have to use that for architecture. And so going to like, what is it called XD Adobe XD. It was a little bit easier because the Adobe products like have a language and you can kind of like understand it a little bit faster if you already have a sense of other Adobe products. And I've pretty much just went to YouTube. I feel like YouTube has so much like way too much.
Amora Brown:
Yeah. YouTube university. I love it.
Gabriela Gonjon:
And like Adobe actually has like YouTube videos dedicated to teaching how to use Adobe XD. And there's also other videos just on UX design in general. And I've also had other friends. Who've had startup apps before and I've worked with them not to like design their apps, but just to like, think about like what the app should have. So like I've always liked the way apps looked and I kept careful attention to them, but I think if you have no background, definitely YouTube is the way to go. And then just trying to understand what is necessary and what is needed for the user. So if you know, like the user experience, like they need to click on this button and that button.
Amora Brown:
I'm applying your advice to my podcast because I still have a lot of design things that I need to discover. And I don't know what I'm doing. So I'm just listening and I'm like, okay, YouTube university.
Gabriela Gonjon:
Okay. So let me just design in like a broader sense, because that's what I use for designing the black beauty app. So as a UX designer, like design is like the key word in architecture and in everything you do, like whether it's anything visual that you do, everything's kind of like less is more because that's what you need to stick out. Like I I've heard so many times like apps, they want the least buttons possible because they don't want to give too many choices to the user. You know, otherwise they're going to get decision fatigue and just like drop off. So for me, like even in architecture, you never want to overcrowd the page or else people will kind of not want to listen to your presentation and where you want the work to speak for itself. You want the picture to save the thousand words without you telling them what it's saying.
Gabriela Gonjon:
And so the same thing for phone, everything about it. You want it to kind of express to you, its meaning without it being all like words and even icons can be too much. So for me, I just look at the phone, I look at what other apps are doing and it's better for UX design only there maybe like in other places too, but not so much for architecture. Maybe. I dunno, in architecture, we have precedents and like at a precedent, you know, you just study it and you say, "I enjoy this about the building. I enjoy the way they do this and that, et cetera. I enjoy the look, the feeling", whatever. And you kind of try to mimic that in your own way. So if you say like, "I love the installation in this building because it provides a great feeling inside" whatever you say, well, I'm going to see what they use and how they did it and try to apply it to my building.
Gabriela Gonjon:
So for an app, like let's say Instagram or Tiktok. Let's say TikTok. Tiktok, they force you to kind of think mindlessly and go through videos nonstop because you know, they took away the time app or the time feature on the top corner and they ler it- they let it slide for you. And obviously you can slide down yourself and that sliding down, the endless scrolling that's from Instagram. People on Instagram are used to sliding down. And so people who were using talk, they already know, yeah, slide down the same way they do it on YouTube the same way they do it on so many other apps where you just endlessly scroll. So of course, if you want the user to scroll nonstop, they're naturally going to start doing that with your app. So don't make your app like a book. Where has it go page by page. Because they're already used to their favorite apps. So when you're doing a design for your phone, if you're trying to get into UX design, look at the apps that you use the most. So if your app is about entertainment, copying copy of design or features from the design that's involving entertainment, you know? So that way it gives the same vibe, the same users know what's going to happen.
Amora Brown:
I like that idea too, because I would naturally think, Oh, I don't want to be similar to an app that I liked because I want to be different. But you're basically saying to, don't reinvent the wheel. Like whatever works, apply it to yourself as well, to whatever you're creating. Thank you so much for sharing that with us. Where can we support more of your work, Gabby?
Gabriela Gonjon:
Where can you support? Okay. So sadly for Uplift, we're not like out there yet, like not like anywhere like publicly yet. So that one cannot really support. We do have Instagram, but there's nothing on it. So you can go to Uplift- I'll send you the Instagram and you can follow like, no, quotes. But for ad hoc cooperative, we do have Instagram and we have a website with a LinkedIn. So if you want to follow all three of them, you definitely can. And that's @adhoccooperative and it's also adhoccooperative.com. And if you search ad hoc cooperative on LinkedIn, you'll find us there too. And if you want to support me and just me by myself or me with everyone else you can follow me on Instagram @cinabunnii and I'll spell cinabunnii. Well, maybe I should spell it right now, I'll have to find it because I switch it up. I wish it was my full name, but its not my full name.
Amora Brown:
Or I could also just put it in the show notes.
Gabriela Gonjon:
I'll just stick to my name. My name is Gabriela Gonjon, with one L, and GONJON. And I immediately show up on LinkedIn and Instagram because I'm the only person with my name. So you can also just use my name to find me.
Amora Brown:
Lucky.
Amora Brown:
I found some people with my name and I was just like, what? How do you have my name? That makes no sense. Well, thank you so much for making time to chat with us. I hope you have a wonderful rest of the day.
Gabriela Gonjon :
Bye. Thank you!
Amora Brown:
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