One of the first things Alex Starnes designed was his own career path.
Now a user experience (UX) designer at NVIDIA, he once had to fight for chances to prove himself in the design field.
After pursuing computer engineering at North Carolina State University, Starnes began his career as a product manager at a large manufacturing company. There, during the final user demonstration of a virtual reality headset, he noticed users had mixed reviews of the product — and that some design changes might’ve helped improve the user experience.
With this realization, Starnes was inspired to pivot his career path to designing positive user experiences. He wanted to understand users’ goals, fears and aspirations, and apply these takeaways to make products easier to use.
But with his background in engineering, Starnes found he had to convince people — including himself — that he could do the job.
