Welcome to another episode of the HIGH (How I Got Here) Series and for this episode, we have Mayowa Adeyemi, our User Experience Writer. In this article, we get to know how Mayowa started her career in UX Writing, how she has grown and her interests beyond work.
Hi Mayowa, can we know you?
My name is Mayowa. I am a Content Designer on the Flutterwave Design team. The summary of my role is basically to ensure that users understand what to do whenever they interact with our product. The specifics of my role revolve around ensuring that our copy and the content on our products are easy to understand and just help users complete whatever action they want to do. But generally, I’m involved in ensuring that we have a great user experience end to end.
That’s great, so what’s the most exciting thing about you?
I’m not a very interesting person generally but the most interesting thing about me is that I became a plant mom a couple of months ago and now I’m a proud owner of 20 plants. I have them in the living room, kitchen, and my room and in different sizes. They aren’t all huge though.
Interesting, so how did you get into this career path?
I wasn’t very sure of what I wanted to study in school. At one point, I wanted to study English but someone told my mum that I should go for English Education so I’ll become a teacher and I didn’t want to be that. Just before I had filled out the JAMB form, my dad talked about this course called Mass Communication and at that time, I had a stint on the radio. When I was much younger, I hosted a kids’ radio show. I thought it’ll be nice so I got in to do Mass Communication in UNILAG. Mass Communication has three divisions; print journalism, broadcasting, public relation and advertising. I got in thinking I was going to do broadcasting but along the way, I discovered advertising – what agencies do and I figured that was what I wanted to do and no longer broadcasting. Just before I got into the university, I interned in an advertising agency where I tried copywriting and saw that I enjoyed it. I went into university with that ready mindset to do advertising. After university, I got a job in an advertising agency doing copywriting, TV ads, radio ads, social media etc. Also, my dad is a designer and out of curiosity, I was already exploring design so I can help out while working with designers since my job as a copywriter was intertwined with designers. I got to a point where I was getting tired of copywriting generally, and I started learning design. I was thinking of switching from copywriting to product design but I was still confused. I had a conversation with Lade Tawak; she was the first person to mention UX Writing and Content Design to me and it felt like a nice middle ground between my writing skills and the newly developed design principle I was learning. I was learning all I could about UX Writing and I got this scholarship from UX Content Collective to do a fundamentals of UX Writing course and that just gave me a good background of everything I needed to know about UX Writing and Content Design. I started joining communities, listening to podcasts etc. I was still indifferent about this path because I felt no one was hiring for that job description. Well, now, I’m here at Flutterwave doing UX Writing full time.
What a journey… What’s your Flutterwave story and how long have you been here?
I have been at Flutterwave for almost a year now. I joined in November last year. When I started learning UX Writing, I was telling everyone about it, posting on social media and just letting people know that’s what I was into now. When the job posting came out, I had almost ten different people send it to me. I applied for the job, prepared thoroughly for it, and went for the interview and it was a nice interview process. Some parts of me felt lucky because when I got it, not so many people knew what it was about. It was easy for me because I already had a portfolio and was building a career around it.
Nice! Can you explain your role to a five-year-old?
I make it easy for you to know what to do within an app. For example, if you’re playing a game, I make it easy for you to move from stage 1 to stage 2 seamlessly.
So tell me, what does a typical work day look like for you?
My day typically starts with a stand-up on the design team. This is where everyone shares what they did the day before, what they’re working on and if there are any blockers etc. Then I go on Slack to see what pending messages I have to respond to. The night before, I make a to-do list of all I want to achieve or get through the following day. I spend the bulk of my mornings following up and responding to people. Midday is usually me doing my actual tasks, say a new feature with a designer, later in the day I join stand-up calls with other designers and just try to tick off all I have on my calendar for the day. A lot of meetings and syncing with different people and finding time to write.
What do you write most time?
Most of what I write are product content in terms of the copy, content, messages, and preempting any questions users might have on the screen. I also write a lot of emails; transactional, notifications etc.
Well done! What’s your proudest moment as a waver?
My proudest moment as a waver was definitely when we announced Flutterwave 3.0, it was so well put together. I watched it at home and I was so excited. I was so proud I worked at this company. Seeing that nobody has done anything remotely similar to it here. During the entire unveiling, seeing designs that people had worked on feature within the narrative made me feel very proud.
Awww… That was such a beautiful moment. What tools make your work seamless and easy?
There are two tools; Notion and Slack. Slack because it makes it easy to reach out to people, slack huddle also makes it quick to jump on a quick call. Then Notion for writing and documentation.
How has working at Flutterwave made you a better professional?
Before Flutterwave, a lot of the work I was doing was freelancing. With freelancing as a content designer, you typically have cases where people have finished building and designing. They are just bringing you in to come and fill the gap with copy. Working at Flutterwave and seeing how much work goes into the smallest of features and being able to be a part of deciding how a feature should appear, how the flow should be and seeing how much thinking goes into the final project. You know, seeing all the work that goes on in the background has helped me appreciate the work better and hone my skills better.
Fantastic. What advice would you give your 16-year-old self?
I’ll say keep exploring, you’re going to have multiple interests over the next couple of years, don’t be stuck in one path and think that’s all you’re going to do for the rest of your life. You owe it to yourself to explore all the different interests that you have.
So wise. What do you do for fun outside work?
Taking care of my plants, hanging out with friends and binge-watching sitcoms.
Where can people connect with you?
You can connect with me on LinkedIn, and Twitter
This is Mayowa’s story and I hope you enjoyed it.
It’s not always what we want, sometimes it’s what we can do efficiently knowing that there’s always room to explore.
See you in the next episode.