Interviews/Mariana Castilho

Overview

• Henry Heffernan
• Mariana Castilho
• Lochie Axon
• Dennis Brotzky

Mariana is a Brazilian product designer currently working at pooolside. She created a project called uilabs.dev where she shares her UI explorations. In this interview we are going to talk about product design, how she learned to code as a designer, and how that influenced her design proces

Emil (00:19)

Hi everyone. In today’s interview, we are talking to Mariana, who is a product designer at Vercel at the moment. I’m a big fan of her work.

Hi Mariana, can you tell us a bit more about yourself to start?

Mariana (00:41)

Yeah, sure Emil, I’m super happy to be here.

I’m Mariana - I am a Brazilian product designer. I’m currently based in Brazil. I work as a senior product designer at Vercel in projects related to AI, like AI integrations, AI studio. Also marketplace and marketplace integrations. And some of the collaboration projects as well.

Emil (01:07)

What did you do before you joined Vercel?

Mariana (01:11)

Before Vercel, I was working at the Universe, which is an iOS app, basically an easy way to build and publish websites and small commerce.

So there I was leading the beginning business and platform, all the product design work related to business and platform. And then I led all the work related to translating all the iOS interfaces and features that we had for web. I’ve been freelancing for a while as well.

Emil (01:46)

Did you learn design yourself or did you go to school for it or how did you start?

Mariana (01:56)

That’s a great question because I did advertising marketing in school actually, but I also studied design at the same time, so I was trying to pursue two degrees at the same time.

And at some point, it was just a lot. I started to do some internships and stuff. So yeah, it was really a lot to deal with.

Eventually I think my parents at the time, they didn’t really know what really design was. So they said, no - just finish marketing and then figure it out.

So when it comes to design, I feel like my relationship started very early, really when I was a kid. I was very into Dragon Ball and all these cartoons at the time. I grew up on internet forums and small websites.

I always was really into web design, video games, art. So I kind of like my relationship with design started pretty early. But when it comes to interface design, software design - basically I learned alone really. Studying, working, freelancing. I didn’t have an official design degree.

Emil (03:09)

Interesting, so I’m guessing a lot of people listening are also interested how you got your job at Vercel. How did that happen? Did you apply or did someone reach out?

Mariana (03:28)

Yeah, so I was always really into publicly sharing my work and explorations that I create in my free time. And I usually share this stuff on X or Twitter or whatever you want to cal it. So yeah, I’d been sharing some work there. And at the time, Guillermo of Vercel CEO saw my work. And yeah, basically he mailed me asking if I was interested in chatting about joining Vercel.

I got super thrilled because I was and I still am a huge fan of Vercel Design Team - I was super happy when he contacted me. Long story short, here I am. But basically Guillermo contacted me after seeing my work on Twitter.

Emil (04:10)

That’s basically what Henry said and what happened to me as well. Yeah, sharing your work is the best thing you can do in this time.

And I guess you had an interview process, right? Like a normal one, but that helped you get noticed?

Mariana (04:36)

Yeah, I talked to some people and I interviewed. But for sure, just the fact that he noted my work helped me a lot instead of just applying like everyone else. For sure it gives an advantage, right? Because you’re already noted basically.

That’s why I really recommend people sharing their work on social media or like X or other platforms. A lot of like my contacts and people that I’ve known that are great came from Twitter, I would say. So building your network and building contacts opens a lot of doors for also freelancing or full time jobs. This is something that I always recommend and forever recommend because it’s really changed my career. My job at Vercel really changed my career. I’m really grateful for all of that.

Emil (05:37)

Yeah, I fully agree. You mentioned, you talked to a few people during the interview process. Did you have to do a design exercise or something? Or was it just talking to people?

Mariana (05:53)

Yeah, that time was more talking to people, talking about my experience, my projects. I think I talked to three or four people at the time. Basically sharing the work that I’m sharing on Twitter - so I felt that people are already kind of familiar with my work and stuff.

It was more about like chats, really.

Emil (06:16)

Okay.

I personally really like your taste in design and, as someone who is not a designer, I’m wondering - like you said you did a lot of stuff - is that the most important part of becoming a designer? What would you say was the biggest accelerator in your career outside of sharing your work, which you just said?

Mariana (06:56)

Great question. Really looking back to my career, I think there are really two key factors that helped me a lot to get where I am.

The first one, which I always mention, is having side projects and dedicating time for free explorations outside your work. And obviously, as we mentioned, even better if you can share them publicly. This was and still is key to my process and to really polish and exercise my craft. Mainly because it lets me explore different techniques and different ideas than what I would usually explore in my daily work. And given the time, I need to exercise my craft and my taste, so that’s key. It’s something that I continue to do. That requires great time management. I know sometimes that it’s not easy and sometimes it’s not possible because sometimes just have a lot going on. And there are multiple periods that just have a lot of things in my life in general. And it was just not possible to keep up with the time and energy that things require.

But I think that’s also important and okay to know your limits and allow yourself really to rest and recharge. But yea - getting better and better with this time management and planning how much energy I can invest helped me a lot.

So, for sure, the first thing is side projects or free explorations. Giving yourself some time away from your work to polish your craft really.

The second thing that helps me and helps me still is that I’m really passionate about what I do and I do really have an ambition of creating extraordinary things. And this is more like an aspirational goal for sure. There is no such thing as perfection, but I always try to improve and I’m always trying to get better and better at what I do.

I just love to design and build stuff. So it rarely feels like I’m actually working and it’s actually like an obligation. It just feels natural and something that I want to do. So yeah - this helps me a lot maintaining my motivation high.

I think these are the main two things that’s made and still make a huge difference in really upscaling my career.

Emil (09:38)

Yeah, that helps me with my motivation as well, to trying to get better and better and creating something very, very nice at some point. Something that I can be really proud of. And I know that every day that I do this type of stuff, it helps me to get closer to that.

Mariana (09:59)

Yeah, and it’s crazy. Like sometimes I revisit some past work from months ago and I completely see total change sometimes in my style and the techniques that I’m using. And I feel like I created this work 10 years ago, but it was really six months ago. So yeah, it’s these daily doses of effort and time and energy that’s built up into really changing how we approach design.

Emil (10:31)

Yeah, I really like that feeling - like looking back at thinking that you made something like you, it’s not what you would do today, or like you would do something, make something better today because that’s like shows that you are actually getting better. But yeah, that’s really cool. And again, I’m not a designer and I’m really curious how designers think.

What sets apart a great product designer from a good one? What’s the distinction there? In your opinion, obviously, because I guess it’s subjective. But if you look at a designer in general, what do you notice and what makes you feel that he or she is very, very amazing?

Mariana (11:23)

Yeah, that’s very subjective and that’s my personal take. Obviously that’s not a rule, but that’s how I feel about it.

To me, what I try to observe is that the designer in question is nailing both form and function. So in a nutshell: function is really like how you can work on the problem space and break down really complex problems and reparations into like simple interfaces and solutions that are really relevant to that problem. So nailing this part of the function is really important because product design/software design, they need to have a purpose and they need to have an intention behind it. It’s not only about looking great. So that’s the first part. If the problem space is being well-defined and if the problem questions being solved in an elegant, simple, and intuitive way.

The second part is the form part, which is really related to taste, to really differentiate what looks and feels great from what doesn’t. And craft to know how to execute with excellence, like your vision based on your taste, which is also part of this equation.

Often I see some things online and tweets where I see that the idea is really good and what’s behind the idea is really good, but the execution is just not quite there yet because either it lacks like taste or because the technique’s not quite there yet.

That’s my personal opinion, of course, but I feel like a great product designer has a great balance between nailing the idea and the problem solving part, but also having the taste and the technique to create something that’s amazing.

Emil (13:15)

And what would you say is like harder to do? The taste part or the idea part?

Mariana (13:22)

I think it really depends on your background and your skills really. I don’t know, that’s a great question. I would say that it depends on the project as well. I feel like there are some projects that is much easier to nail the problem space and to come up with a great idea and a great foundational UI and it’s hard to make these UI really interesting, appealing, and delightful to use.

Some other projects are really the opposite - like the visual idea and how it should feel is kind of clear in your mind, but you’re struggling to link that with the actual function and how it should actually solve the problem. I think these two things should work in parallel, really.

I don’t have a good answer for this question. I think it depends.

Emil (14:20)

No, I think that’s a great answer. So I think we can move to another part.

I don’t know design but you obviously started UI labs where you share your things you built with code. Obviously a lot of people like this project , and I like this project as well and the first question is why did you decide to start learning code?

Mariana (15:04)

Yeah, that’s a great question. And I’m happy to see that a lot of people like the project. It started not really pretentious. I didn’t want to achieve nothing specific just to share some explorations. And yeah, people seem to like it. So I’m really happy about it.

I think my motivation to learn code and to go deeper into UI engineering came from a really strong desire to know how to build the work that I was creating. And I think a lot of these other designers can relate to that, but a lot of times when you finish your high fidelity designs and you have like your Figma file and everything looks great and you’re feeling happy about it, and you hand over to the engineer and hope they will be the right; even though they built it completely right and it’s like one-to-one with your Figma file, everything feels perfect, like spacing, textiles, color styles, everything’s like exactly as it should be; sometimes just doesn’t translate right.

It’s more of a sensation and less something like objectively wrong, if that makes sense. Like there’s something missing and you cannot tell exactly what it is because on the paper everything is matching. And I think this frustration of not knowing what was missing grew into a place that I just wanted to be autonomous to build my own work and really to go on the deepest level of understanding: how I can build it and really try to find the secret sauce. That was really the motivation that made me go deeper into UI engineering and eventually build UI Labs because, as I mentioned before, side projects and explorations are my success formula to learn something. So I just applied the same formula with code. I just started to work on side projects and tried to do stuff myself. And eventually this little project came out.

Emil (17:06)

That’s really cool. You said you started doing that because you wanted to build the designs or try to learn it, but does that also mean that you work in code at Vercel as well or is that not the case?

Mariana (17:26)

In the beginning that was not the case. And that’s why exactly why my side projects were super important because - I will speak from my own experience - when I was starting to learn code and UI engineering, I was not feeling confident on my skills and I was not feeling confident that I was making the right decisions and I had the right techniques to solve some specific engineering problems. So when I started to work on UI labs and some other like small projects on the side during my free time, I started to feel like more and more confident that I knew how to solve like really a lot of different problems that I didn’t knew like some months ago. So in the beginning, I was not working code at Vercel and at some point it’s built into a moment that I felt confident about it. So just like drop some lines here and there. I pushed some PRs and I learned as well from these PRs. So today - yes, it’s not my primary function at Vercel. I’m primarily designing. But when I have some time, I love to jump into code and just like try to fix things here and there, build a component myself.

Emil (18:34)

Yeah, that’s really cool. It’s really, really powerful as well. You can just do everything yourself.Yeah, that’s really cool. It’s really, really powerful as well. You can just do everything yourself.

Mariana (18:42)

Yeah, and also when you communicate with engineers it’s kind of different because you will learn how to speak the same language. Mommunication is just so much easier than if you didn’t like know how to code. A lot of things really improved since I went into UI engineering really.

Emil (19:01)

And how did you learn it specifically? Because engineering in general is pretty big right? And can be quite overwhelming at the start. Did you read a lot of articles, bought a course that helped you?

Mariana (19:28)

Honestly, just sitting down and studying, getting access to some great content like Josh Comeau’s course really helped me on React, CSS. Sam Selikoff’s Build UI, also super nice, and your course as well, Animations on the Web, you know that I’m a fan of it. For the animation part, it helped me a lot. There’s so many great content outside. They’re from great creators, really great people. They’re willing to help. Basically I just studied alone, watched some courses. The key part to learn and to really solidify all the knowledge was starting to build stuff and make mistakes and research and learn how to solve these mistakes.

Emil (20:19)

How long did it take to get you to where you are today in terms of coding skills? What we can see on UILabs, for example.

Mariana (20:34)

I feel like I’m still learning really. Like I don’t feel like I’ll ever stop learning. But I started UILabs in February, I guess.

Even on UILabs, I see my first components there and the latest ones and I already see a huge difference in terms of technique/quality. So I really see myself evolving also on the engineering side. I don’t know really, I don’t know how to precise the time that it took because everyday is a new day that I want to learn something new so I’m not really doing any math in my head on how much time I need to arrive on that specific point.

I also don’t want to send a message like, “hey you should do that for this amount of time”. You learn it because people are different and these formulas never really work.

Emil (21:35)

Yeah, sure. Was there like anything that surprised you about coding? Because like you were designing for a long time and you kind of knew and you were working with engineers for a long time.

Was there something that made you say “wow, I didn’t expect it to work this way” or something like that. I’m just really curious about it.

Mariana (21:56)

The most surprising thing to me that I was not really expecting or I didn’t foresee was really how learning to code would influence my designs and my work as a product designer. So kind of like the other way around really.

Learning how to code completely changed the way I design. I feel that now I design it with much more intention because I know exactly how the final output can be built. So while I’m designing, while I’m in Figma, for instance, I’m all the time doing like this relationship with code and seeing, “okay, now here I can apply Flexbox, I can set a padding of like four pixels” or whatever. I’m all the time doing this math and this really makes my design much more intentional, really. I’m also much more critic about like polish, how the state should transition and how the experience overall should feel. In general I feel like the surprising thing to me was how this changed who I am as a designer really and my work as a designer.

Emil (23:07)

Right, that was kind of my next question, but you answer it already.

Also from an engineering perspective, you can sort of see who is a designer that knows how to code based on the Figma designs that you see, which is also very interesting. It confirms the thing you just said, that you think about Flexbox and everything, how you could do it.

Another UI labs-related question. Do you design it in Figma or do you jump straight in the code?

Mariana (23:53)

That’s a great question and some people ask me this question on Twitter.

Most of the times I start sketching in Figma just because it helps me exploring different ideas faster than I would take in code. In Figma, I feel free to just create multiple frames and go crazy and see what sticks really. But once the general idea is locked in and I know exactly what I want to build. Most of the times I don’t even finish my designs in Figma, I just drop Figma and I move directly into code, and I start creating the UI there. 99% of the times, the final output in code and what goes into production looks nothing like my initial sketch in Figma.

When I start to code, the direction usually changes or I realize that there are some certain constraints or behaviors that I didn’t anticipate when I was designing Figma. I create an improvisation of code to get to the final outputs that I share on UI labs and social media. That’s really the workflow that I found that works best to me.

About Figma prototypes and stuff, I never use it really. I use it more for flows, for instance. If I want to explain how a flow should behave - like transition between screens. For this specific goal, I use Figma prototype. But apart from that, to create animations for component animations and stuff, never. Everything into code.

Emil (25:34)

Okay, so you just like wire the Figma designs up so that you can click on the button and go to a different page basically.

Mariana (25:42)

Yeah, usually when I need to explain to some other people what I’m thinking about a specific flow, yes. But that’s kind of it.

For more polishing animations. it’s just easier to do directly into code because you have more granular control over the parameters than using Figma prototype. It’s just easier to do directly into code.

Emil (26:09)

Yeah, that makes sense. When you work on a side project or at Vercel - let’s say you’re stuck on a problem or on a design task in general, where do you get your inspiration from? Are there any people you look up to? Any books, art? How do you handle being stuck?

Mariana (26:38)

Sometimes I just can’t stand it, it never goes away and I stay blocked for like days in a row which sucks. Usually, inspiration comes from really random places like art. I’m really into art - I love going to museums and I love trying to rationalize what makes great art great, really, so that’s something that I really enjoy. But also video games, I’m super into video games, nature, movies, all this cliche.

For sure there are some people and some teams that I look up to. I really like the Vercel design team. It’s an amazing group of product designers and product engineers. They inspire me a lot. A lot of times when I’m stuck into some problem on Vercel or there are some things that I don’t know exactly how to design or I’m having like a creative block - I just talk to some people from the team and I see their work and they usually really inspire me a lot. There’s also Family team that has a super incredible level of consistency, shipping, excellent stuff. The Linear team. I feel like we’re fortunate to live in a era that we have a lot of great talents around us. I really look up to different people from different teams. I think they’re all amazing.

Emil (28:01)

You mentioned thinking about art and what makes art great. And I have a related question. But how do you think about taste and how can someone develop if someone can develop taste at all in your opinion? Taste when it comes to design specifically, and how would you get better at that in your opinion.

Mariana (28:35)

Well, I think this question deserves an entire episode. That’s again my personal take, not claiming to be the source of truth, but I do feel like taste can be developed. I do feel like you can also develop taste in general and not only taste for design.

The first thing is to define what’s taste, right? And to me, taste is really the ability to recognize some patterns and systems that feel extraordinary and feels that have a high aesthetic value. So that’s for me what’s taste. It’s also kind of subjective, but that’s how I try to rationalize it. These patterns and systems can be composed by repetition, balance, symmetry, all these general rules that we also see in design.

To me, the best way to exercise taste is being exposed to great stuff. Being exposed to great art, to nature, to great design, to great music, and be really intentional and refine your intuition about why something has a high aesthetic value and try to translate that into all these characteristics that I mentioned, like balance, symmetry.

If I’m seeing a painting and I feel like “wow, that’s incredible, that’s extraordinary”, and I feel like there is a lot of great taste into that - I just try to rationalize. “Okay, why do I feel this way? Is it about the balance, is it about the composition, is it about repetition, is it about the color scheme?”.

It’s the same thing for design. That’s what I’m doing all the time when I see work online or like magazines, or some sort of design work that’s extraordinary. I just try to understand why this touches me in my heart and why I feel that’s extraordinary. Sometimes I come with “I feel like it’s because it’s balanced like these” or “the colors are really pleasing” or something else. Or sometimes I just cannot tell and it remains a mystery to myself, but I keep thinking about it.

I think people should talk more about taste because at the same time that feels super subjective. I do feel that it can be developed and can be rationalized and people can put more intention into trying to develop their own tastes.

This is a very extensive topic and probably I’m not the most skilled person to talk about it, but it’s something that’s on my mind all the time when I’m working.

Emil (31:17)

Yeah, okay, that’s very interesting. So if you browse the web, let’s say, or even on Twitter, you also pay attention to the things you see. And if you find something you think that’s very beautiful, like even a website or a tweet and animation, you try to think why you think it’s beautiful.

Mariana (31:37)

Yes, yes. It’s kind of like - as my side projects, which are something that I try to keep as my everyday practice, I try to do this as well.

When I’m like browsing the web, or reading some books or magazines - the medium doesn’t really matter it’s more about the intention behind it - I try to ask myself this question.

Sometimes it’s not even something that struck me as something beautiful, but something that touched me or caught my attention for some reason. I try to just rationalize why this specific thing caught my attention among the sea of other design work being put on Twitter, because there’s a lot of work being put on there. A lot of great work, we have a lot of great creators.

When something really caught my attention in a special way, I really spend some time just meditating around that and trying to understand what makes it so unique and so extraordinary.

Emil (32:39)

Yeah, that’s very interesting. I do that as well. I scroll on Twitter a lot, and it’s kind of useless but I also think that it helps me refine my taste. I guess there are better ways to do that, or more productive ways, but I don’t.

Mariana (32:59)

I think it’s fair. I do that a lot as well. Even to see things that sometimes I acknowledge that there’s taste behind and there’s clear intention, but that’s not something that’s aligned with my own taste.

I think that there is also this thing about perceiving taste and intention, but also nurturing your own. There’s a lot of work that I see where it’s polished, there is a clear intention and there is taste behind it, but it’s not really aligned with my own taste and what I’m nurturing for myself. But I also think it’s interesting to really build and create this distinction - find your own style, which sometimes is hard.

Emil (33:39)

Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. We are close to the end, but something you published - last week, actually, at the time of this recording - is an announcement that you are going to make a course together with Derek from Clark.

Why did you decide to do it and why this type of course, sort of an engineering course for designers, right?

Mariana (34:27)

Wow, this is a philosophical question.

I am creating this course with Derek, who is amazing. My motivation was really to build something that I would have liked to see when I was starting to learn how to code and really making UI engineering more approachable for designers.

When I started to work some courses and stuff that were directed to engineers, I felt lost in the beginning and it took me some time to learn how to start because there’s like so many slangs and so many different ways of approaching those specific problems that I was not used to because my mindset was like a designer mindset.

So our ambition is really try to create something that talks directly to designers and to the designer mindset, and helps build this bridge. These are some cool techniques to come to create your own components, but that’s how you like migrate these into a UI engineer mindset with different concerns and different things to think about.

Just trying to create something that I would have liked to see. That’s the key motivation behind it.

Emil (35:52)

Yeah, that’s really amazing. I’m very interested in the course.

Will there also be a design part of the course where you actually design the stuff that you’re going to build or is it code-only basically?

Mariana (36:14)

Yeah, it’s going to be a lot of design parts.

This is still being decided, but we also had a lot of great response from engineering, wanting to learn a little bit more about design, which is super interesting.

TL;DR still defining the structure of the chorus. We’re working on that. But the idea is that we will have parts where we will design some components from scratch, trying to teach some cool techniques. And then we’ll take these designs and build also from scratch. So basically you learn how to design and to build the components and the interfaces from scratch. That’s the idea.

Emil (36:56)

Nice. That’s amazing. It’s an insta purchase for me, so I can’t wait when it’s going to be released.

Let’s go back to for the last question: what advice would you give someone outside of the advice you’ve given already in this interview for someone who is looking to improve their design skills, whether it’s an engineer that wants to get into design or someone that just wants to become a designer? Are there any books courses or anything else that you would do if you had to learn it again?

Mariana (37:38)

I feel like I’ve said it all, honestly. And these are things that I continue to do: projects, explorations, really put intention in your free time and of course, as much as you can, respecting your own boundaries and your own mental health and energy. Put some intention in your free time to exercise something that you want to learn either if it can be design or engineering.

About courses - I’m a huge fan of your course, Animations on the Web. I’m also a huge fan of Sam Selikoff, Josh Coumeau. These courses help me a lot.

A lot of people send me messages asking like teach me how you learn, teach me how you got there. But honestly, there’s no secret formula really. It’s more about discipline, time management, and putting the right intention behind things.

I know it’s hard. It’s much easier said than done and I know that I’m saying this now and it sounds super easy but it’s actually not and it’s hard to keep motivation and to keep the energy week after week, month after month and not letting your intention drop but there’s no shortcut. You just need to put some time and learn it really.

And the more you do, the better you get. And from my experience for both design and engineering, the more I design, the more I get better at design and the more I code, the more I get better at engineering. And yeah, there’s really no shortcut. And that’s how I learned at least. So that’s really my advice.

Emil (39:26)

Okay, and when it comes to the discipline you mentioned, do you have have strict rules? Do you work at least a certain amount of time when you start projects, or is it just doing it every day and that’s it?

Mariana (39:40)

I don’t have any strict rule. Overall I am someone very disciplined in all my life. I’ve always been like this, so it comes kind of naturally to me to commit to something and to stick to it.

But something that I’ve learned is actually how to really respect my mental space and my energy as well. Like we know each other and you know that I’m really passionate about design and engineering and like building stuff and rarely it feels like I’m working. It’s really something that I’m passionate about. And a lot of times I just felt on my body and in my mind that I was just giving it too much. I was just putting too much time and too much energy. I was like not paying attention to other stuff that are also important to me and respecting my time to recharge and rest.

So I kind of learned the opposite. I kind of learned how to let myself recharge, let myself really do other stuff, go do some sports or hang out with my friends and read a book and really respect my limits, which exist and I’m very human. I feel like the discipline part for me was the easiest one. It took me some time to learn on how to give my body and my mind the rest that they need. I used to feel guilty about it to be honest, like in days I was not really feeling like working on my side projects and stuff, I was feeling guilty and I felt like “I’m wasting time”, but that’s absolutely opposite. When I take a few days of a break to just do something else, I come in much more recharged and much more energy and creativity to work all my side projects, or even at my work.

My last advice would be to go full in, but also respect your body and your mental health. It’s really, really important. If you go all in, but your mind’s not good and your body’s not good, your health’s not good, nothing of this really matters at the end. Just prioritize your health, your mental health and try to get as much discipline as you can.

Emil (42:06)

Yeah, that’s really good that you said that. You said that you felt guilty before about not doing something, and seeing people posting great stuff on Twitter or somewhere else also makes you even more guilty of not doing something because you see all those people post amazing things. But oftentimes it’s just an illusion, because I don’t do stuff all the time, but I do post on Twitter the stuff that I make.

So it can create an impression as if you or me are working 24/7 on it, but that’s obviously not the case. And I also feel guilty sometimes.

Mariana (42:49)

It’s also learning about how to deal with our own frustrations of seeing great work - like “oh my god, I wanted to create something like this and what am I doing with my time, I should be working and polishing my craft” - which I think is a great mindset and it’s my mindset - but honestly, for real, at the end of the day, if you’re not healthy, if our mental health is not good, it’s useless because at some point you break at some points our body tells us to stop and just put attention on recharging and resting and taking care of your relationships, of your life outside work, which to me is really important.

This is something that I would say that I’m still learning how to deal with that, with guilt and feeling that I should be working more. But today I do really appreciate all the time that I’m not working and I’m doing something else because there’s also a lot of other stuff. They’re super important to me and I feel great to be able to take care of them as well.

Emil (44:01)

Yeah, that’s very good for you. And I agree with everything you said.

Those are all the questions I had for you. It was great to talk to you. Is there anything else you would like to talk about in this interview?

Mariana (44:21)

No, not really.

I came in feeling that it would be more like an interview, but we’ve known each other, so it just feels like a normal chat.

I feel like I’ve shared everything that I want to share. Thanks everyone for listening and for going on UI Labs and giving great feedback. I appreciate it.

Keeping the learning mindset, keeping spirit high - that’s really it.

Emil (44:51)

Thank you for your time. I’m waiting and others are also waiting for the course. I will link it somewhere down below. Thank you.

Mariana (44:59)

Yes, I’m excited. Thank you.

Interview notes

• uilabs
• UI Engineering for Designers
• buildui by Sam Selikoff
• Josh Comeau’s courses