EP15. The Life of a UX Design Nomad from Costa Rica to China with Carlos Lastres
Welcome back to the User Flows podcast everyone. My name is Thomas Morrell and I'll be your host.
This is a show where we talk about UX Design and Careers and I get to interview designers who inspire me about how they got started in the field so I can break down patterns or best practices that they use so we can all learn together.
Today, I'm speaking with Carlos Lastres, a Creative Director, Designer, Digital Nomad living and working in Shenzen, China. Carlos's mission is to change the worldthrough creative thinking, innovative marketing & exceptional design. I am a sucker for a lofty goal so I can't wait to get into that. Let's welcome Carlos to the show.
I had connected with Carlos online and was really interested in the digital nomad life he was living as a Costa Rican native in China. I wanted to learn more about what he was doing and see what kind of tips he could share with other designers who might be interested in packing their bags and getting out on the road.
Carlos breaks down his origin story in design and how his early childhood drawing capabilities and curiosity lead him to where he is now. Carlo's uses some productized services to sell his freelance work on his website. I asked him how he came up with those services and he breaks down how those work for the companies that he serves. I like the terms you use for your design services. Can you go into say Roadmapping.
Overall, I like the way that Carlos brands himself online. A lot of designers portfolios go completely missed when applying for jobs because they look exactly like everyone else's. Wether you like Carlo's style or not. It is him and it displays exactly the person you're going to get. As someone who sees countless resumes, designer websites and portfolios. I connected with his story for the simple fact that it was different from everyone else. Carlo's talks us through creating his portfolio and has some advice for letting your own personality shine.
The life of a traveling designer is not always easy. There are challenges like language, time zones and cultures. We talk about the biggest challenges he's encountered being an expat in China
Carlos has some sage advice for such as following your fulfillment and not your passions. How a young student or developer might switch to a career in UX Design and his biggest inspirations. Travel and getting out of his comfort zone.
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Show Highlights
[1:01] Carlos's Story
[3:37] The speed of development working in China
[6:20] His journey from Developer to UX Designer
[8:01] His dislike for the word freelance
[9:40] Encouraging designers to fail and learn through failing
[14:28] Creating a design portfolio with personality
[16:30] Dealing with time zones as an international design consultant
[18:31] The challenges of being an expat in China
[22:00] Following your fulfillment and not your passion
[23:18] Your job as a junior designer is to find a job
[24:00] The life of a traveling designer
[25:00] Finding growth by always being out of your comfort zone
[28:00] Always share your design and your ideas. It's the best way to learn
Connect with Carlos
Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/carloslastres/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/clastresdesign/
Website: lastrescarlos.com
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If you haven't already, please subscribe to User Flows on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or anywhere else you listen to podcasts. If you prefer video, you can watch it on the UserFlows YouTube channel. Share this episode with friends and family or anyone you know who's interested in UX design. If you'd really like to help me out, you can visit, thomasmorrell.com/survey to let me know what you'd like to learn on the show or you're more or less.
Transcript
Thomas Morrell 0:11 Welcome back to the User Flows podcast everyone, my name is Thomas Morrell, and I'll be your host. This is a show where we talk about UX design and careers, and I get to interview designers who inspire me about how they got started into the field, so we can break down the patterns and best practices that they've used to be successful so we can all learn and grow together.
So today I'm speaking with Carlos Lastres. Carlos is a creative director, designer, and digital nomad living and working in Shenzen, China which is super cool. I can't wait to talk about that.
So Carlos's mission is to change the world through creative thinking, innovative marketing, and exceptional design. I am a sucker for a lofty goal so I also wanted to get into that. That's awesome. Welcome to the show, Carlos, really happy, we finally get to connect.
Carlos Lastres 0:51 Thank you very much, Thomas, That's right, changing the world, through design from China.
Thomas Morrell 0:58 Very cool. So could you tell us a little bit about yourself, you know something maybe we won't learn on your LinkedIn profile.
Carlos Lastres 1:04 Sure, so the first thing I'm half Costa Rican half Cuban totally all over the place from China to Latin America, right. I moved to China six years ago because of my job opportunity, and I fell in love with the Chinese world, everything is amazing. And most importantly why I say that is because China gets me out of my comfort zone, every single day, and that makes me a very good professional because it's like every day is a totally new thing. And it's amazing. I love it.
Thomas Morrell 1:43 Oh, that's fantastic. Yeah, that's definitely out of your comfort zone. I mean, I went and lived and worked abroad but it was in England. So it's kind of very much similar to the US, going from Costa Rica to China, that's got to be quite a culture shock.
Carlos Lastres 1:58 It is, especially the language is totally different, right, you can survive with English in most places by not all the time.
Thomas Morrell 2:11 Are you actually taking courses in Chinese?
Carlos Lastres 2:15 So I think the second year here I expect to take more seriously to learn Chinese and have a decent level right now. But, being outside and speaking with people and just hearing conversations is the best way to learn.
Thomas Morrell 2:31 Yeah, my wife is from the Dominican Republic and I always struggled to learn Spanish. But when we actually go down there and hang out with her family, I feel like I pick up on it so much faster than trying to learn on apps or learn in class.
So you seem to be living a super interesting life. I think a lot of people would like to know how they go from living and working in one place like the US, to living and working someplace totally different like China, could you kind of go through exactly how that your journey worked out for you?
Carlos Lastres 3:05 Yeah, so we can get into that. A few years ago, I worked for HP Labs. It was a multicultural team. But back then, I was developing, I was, I was working as a software engineer. Everything was set up for us but we got to learn and we had a lot of freedom to make the software that we wanted to. There was a lot of planning, and we were making sure, that we got make the best software out there. I had seen that startups in the US were still doing that, like okay yeah we have a vision, but we got a plan and when I came to China, the first rule is we have to release, even if it is not working but we need to release, even a version of the app, but then they go and immediately start to get user experience, user feedback the user data. Nobody's clicking here, remove this. Let's add another one. And I was like WOW, okay, these guys build fast, whatever they have, they developed so so fast because in at least two months you really have four iterations.
And you already kind of know the user by that time, but it's a lot of time-saving and money-saving right because I mean it's hard to project, six months. If you put it out, it looks amazing, and it's like, okay, nobody's using it. Well, he was like just throw that thing and see what happened, and then lets, let's keep improving.
Thomas Morrell 4:44 I've been on those projects where we spent forever trying to launch something, and then nobody uses it. And yeah, instead of just being very quick to figure out why, and making changes on the fly, we spend another six months plus in development, come up with a fix. So what were your origin story and design, how did you get started as a UX, UI designer?
Carlos Lastres 5:10 My first major was as a software engineer and engineering, and I love it. I mean, always good at it. I enjoyed that since I'm a teenager had very creative and passionate about drawing and put things together in a way that looks nice. So I develop my expertise. I was always interested in having a very nice UI and I focused a lot on the content, and people appreciated that.
Then when I started at my first big company and everybody was like, okay, let's give it to Carlos because he makes it look really good. But then, nobody was like naming this function or role and after two years after being a designer, I see that this movement of user experience is getting popular and I was like okay I can relate with these people I didn't know it was a term for it and actually there are more rules.
I completely fell in love, because it was like, Okay, I have been doing this, and that really makes sense and other people support it. So it's good. And then I decided to move more into the design. And as to the user have read a lot about psychology and behavior, and then I just got obsessed. I got up to testing, making things, making solutions for people's problems, so I dropped a little bit from software development, and then just moved completely to design.
Thomas Morrell 6:38 And you think that background in development, kind of helped you in your design career?
Carlos Lastres 6:45 Totally, totally because then I came to these teams, in which I always see this friction between designers and developers, because then the designer can be too creative, and then the developer to analytical. For example, from the perspective of a developer, the website is just a set of columns and rows, it's very much like building in-house, while the design is that we'll get these elements here, gradients, things moving, there's a clash between ideas.
Being able to speak the language developer speak, the language of the founders can be a real skill. Like saying okay guys, let's make a page and we're only going to use these elements because that's what they can develop, and to the developer that can say, Yeah, this looks nice but what about if we can't code it. And then they'll see that our creative leadership makes for a meaningful development process. They get more likely to do it. It has helped me a lot to develop in my career because then people like to work with me in both case management, design, and development.
Thomas Morrell 7:53 So today you're 100% freelance or do you have your own agency, what are you doing now?
Carlos Lastres 7:58 Yeah, I, I don't like that word, freelance actually because freelance and the definition of freelancer, you're gonna work for a short time at a company. I like to say consultant. I like to get involved and grow with the company. So right now, I work in-house for a company, and I have my consultant company.
Thomas Morrell 8:22 That's fantastic. And I like that the term consultants too. I think that's a lot better because freelance can be for somebody who's kind of messing around in the industry and not really their to solve problems and make things happen. I love that.
Now I like how you term or define your design services on your website. If you could go into a couple of those like the way you say 'road mapping? It wasn't exactly how I would use the word road mapping but I like the way that you use it.
Carlos Lastres 8:51 So right now I have like, from all the years that I've been working on it, I decided to go in three paths. The first one as you say the roadmap, and I pick the name because every time I sit down with somebody that has an idea or starting a product, I feel like I'm guiding them and I'm clearing the road and we can get to a certain point. So I said okay, I'm not making your product until you take the time to actually understand the destination. And together we'll build the road, but I decided to put the word road map. And as part of all this a start-up for people with a good idea, but they maybe don't know who is the real user, or how they should approach it is like making an app, or just a start with a website or maybe use Instagram, and see how people react. So, just to push in the right way.
Something I always like to tell people is, I have failed more times than I've ever succeeded. So I know the kind of which way we can go because I have failed a lot. And that's good, and I encourage people to fail, you learn a lot. So I present you with the roadmap and then I get the product to come with what's already productive, or you have something that, that isn't working. What kind of, like, maybe a refresh or a better look and feel, and then just make it a professional. A right now, the other is a little startup or established companies that they have services or software that they're people developed and of course they get experts on it but then the more expert you become less you rely on getting to know the user, you are, you forget to believe that people don't know what it's about, or where they could play, or and I love because then I got companies by okay how you sign up, and it's like yeah you should click here for a minute. I'm like, No, I wouldn't get that ever, but I need to be there, There, there is no indication that I should, but in their mind is so clear of course because they haven't done 1000s of product camp I still like that like okay we got in this a minute like a fitness camp, in which you get in shape, so we put those products and we get in shape.
And then yeah at last my master's degree is in marketing and business, so I kind of combined everything and then I just help the people okay let's throw it in front of an audience. This might bead in a way that people really find it because for example, usually people don't want that okay I need one. And we'll just go on. He was like, Okay, how can I improve my website, or do I need a UX, UI designer, this type of thing so actually the whole word keyword is amazing, it's fascinating because you learn how much about what people are looking, as I said, I work for a manufacturing company that develops light therapy products, and, and it's all about fun because we need to make devices. And it's like, okay, we make lighter weight products but nobody's perfect, I need the light because they go like okay, I have wrinkles. I'm getting old. How I remove acne. I have spider veins. So you're going to make all these, this copywriting and this post and art post podcast PRs on like okay, acne, and then that's how you ended up finding an audience, but to perform. So yeah, I'd say those three are like the main, the main market order. Yeah but like the biggest need that I have seen so far.
Thomas Morrell 12:41 Oh, that's fantastic. Now that explains why I see sometimes you're talking about light therapy on your social media so yeah, that's really cool, that's, that's an excellent idea. And, yeah, I think podcasting is a great way for businesses to get their word out there, I love that. And I like that you're kind of productizing your services like that.
I had my own agency for a number of years I think one of the reasons we failed was because we were never able to create real processes around the different services and turn them into products. And it was always you know we get a new client and would be like, What can we do for you? We'll do anything, which was the wrong way to go about things. We needed that process that we followed every time so it could be repeatable and scalable.
Overall I really like the way you brand yourself, And as someone who sees countless resumes, designers’ websites, and portfolios I connected with your website I think that it’s just very, you. It had its own personality. Can you talk through creating your website and how other designers can brand themselves, so they can connect with the audience that they're looking to connect with?
Carlos Lastres 13:51 Of course, I'm so I'm glad you said that you failed. That's amazing. You learned all you could. Yeah, younger designers need to understand that you can't always go and say okay I can do anything for you, or let me know what you need, and I will do it. Because it's endless. There's always something else, and then you go AWOL. So it's kind of, kind of gets messy, in the, in the client’s mind because like okay, this guy is working for me there, and he doesn't have anything else going on. So it's important to put that.
Now regarding the website. When you build something people will appreciate that when they actually look at you. It feels like my website I put this is bright colors again some dark contrast on the background, because it's part of myself, in, in terms of those colors bright colors, and a lot of things in, like my ideas it's just like I'm speaking. For example, I have tattoos, I'm covered in tattoos, and all of them are very bright. And you can see like I have orange and then I have blue and a lot of. So I wanted to show that people that when they see my website. I can feel it and I can see happiness, and he's doing these drawings on the website and so when you build your website first focus on the products, or you want to set to offer. And that is very structured also will help you to organize how much to charge for analyzing and so on.
And secondly, just be like, people needs to feel they're talking to you. As I said, everybody else is taken so just be yourself. In China, a bit conservative with tattoos, but I don't hide. If I have important meetings I show them. I let them know that I am proud of them. They are part of me, and they feel what they feel about me and see me so confident about their respect. So, yeah, never, never be afraid or show who you are, people will appreciate it and will like it.
Thomas Morrell 15:56 Very nice. And so in crafting that website. Does anything change at all in attracting, I guess as an international traveler, attracting the company that you want to work with? Is there anything special you need to do to put people at ease that you might be working in China but working for a company in the US or somewhere else?
Carlos Lastres 16:17 People always worry about the time zones, because they're like, maybe he'll be sleeping when we're awake, but then I found a better solution for that. Well first, China never sleeps, so I sleep a bit late. And second, people are used to going to eight, or nine in the office, and then you go home.
I explain, at least people in the US. You have your whole day to plan your ideas, brief descriptions, or things you want me to do. And then while you're resting overnight, I'm working. When you get up again to work, I will be still there. I'll let you know what I did, you can check, you still have again the whole day, reviewed carefully, but we actually have like a 24-hour cycle.
When they get used to it. They love it. And then they keep people keep rolling like Okay, I like this because I can take my time. I slip or kind of be late to this and ask me for some small changes at the beginning of the day, so they can do their stuff, relax, take a look and it's like okay, this Monday. Carlos, we'll have it ready for the next thing that's for like, more US.
Customers from Europe, and it's just, like, eight hours difference most of the time, so I just kind of start late, but they, if I need to do it, and I'll go and in China, what I haven't been seen is that people don't like too much, you work remotely. So I visit the company from time to time is like okay I'm here guys working, and they get used to it and they say okay he's delivering what he promised in, its a fit. That's, that's, that's the secret basically if you want to work remotely, or are doing, you just do what you said. You said I'm gonna have the website, and it's gonna have to pay to do it. If you feel you cannot do it, then pay. Okay, guys, I can only have to pay when they want to see to pay you, they're going to be alright. I like it looks good, and he said it's kind of explained so fine.
Thomas Morrell 18:17 Under promise, over deliver kind of thing. What are some of the biggest challenges you've encountered, of being an ex-pat in China?
Carlos Lastres 18:33 Language is one of them, something maybe you have big ideas or they asked me to explain why I've been in a certain way and it gets a bit telling you, right, right, explain some abstractions of my mind or my creative process.
And the second one as I said, they don't see, well the remote thing. So they think I'm just going to be they're lazy, but once they start to see the deliverable and the fact that I'm actually doing what I said, they get like working with me. If they understand that I can get more done in three hours than being eight hours in the office. So, they love it and actually they push me to do more. So, but I will say those, those are like the biggest ones, actually, and a developer and design is very nice and very fast as I said, so just adapted to those things.
Thomas Morrell 19:26 So what's the, what's the exchange rate like is it fairly easy to live over there is it like living in one of the big cities in the US or the world?
Carlos Lastres 19:36 It will depend, of course, right now I live in a big city in Shenzen and it's quite affordable. Buying a house is very expensive like three times my housing. I don't know. Central US, but for sure having an apartment here is affordable housing compared to New York. So, it's okay, I will say it's quite good. And because China's like the manufacturing country of the world, a lot of things are quite cheap.
Thomas Morrell 20:06 Okay, now you also had a pretty interesting TED talk out there that I thought, I think it was entitled why you shouldn't follow your dreams, or your passions and why you shouldn't follow your passion, could you dive into that and tell us a little bit about that?
Carlos Lastres 20:19 So they asked me for a university in Hangzhou. Another big city, to give this talk to the students that were in the last year of university. So I precisely wanted to make an impact on them and I told them, okay, don't follow your passion, and I remember all the faces, confused why is this guy. Why should I follow my passion?
Then I use respect to explain that the way society, teachers, father. What parents and so on. About us about passion issues like okay, you're going to be happy to do anything, you will love everything you have in mind, but a passion is actually just the feeling in feelings change feelings change too often.
I am passionate about talking I love burgers. I'm passionate about burgers but I cannot eat burgers every day, number one, and we'll get fat. Number two, probably Fridays I will hate burgers, and then I don't want to see them again, or I get I don't know sake for whatever the thing is I cannot follow my passion, a passion for things I change, and they're precise, their passions because you don't do this full time.
Another thing that I love is to draw, but when I draw, I express my feelings, and I know whatever I want to draw, but if I'm angry maybe I draw something powerful, a lot of energy. If I one day I'm in love. Something more so there may be a thinner line, and so on. For example, somebody come and say okay can you make a drove me. And then they tell me that five days in a row I'm like great, I don't want to draw anymore, right, because it's, it's just the feeling. Yeah, it is part of my passion, but it can change at anytime.
So what I recommend to the students is just find something that you're good at. You don't need to love it doesn't need to be your passion, or you're good at something you can master, and people will appreciate that and they will pay for that. And once you do something that you're good at it. People appreciate it. You're going to reward you can feel it.
As I said, burgers made me happy. I can't eat burgers every five seconds. They make a design for our company, and they were so happy they were showing in their social media and say look, it is our new branding, and we're so proud. That makes me feel fulfilled, and that gives me a purpose. So I encourage everybody to go and try as many things as they can see what they're good at. Maybe they like it or not, but the sensation or feeling, or feel will make you feel that love that finding of purpose and fulfillment that kind of everything, they'll love that.
Thomas Morrell 22:59 Yeah, any sage advice or a young designer who wants to have the traveling, designing life. Any advice for getting started making that happen?
Carlos Lastres 23:16 Yeah, so one thing I have seen young designers, is when you don't have a job, or something that is giving you a stable, stable income, your job is to find a job. That you should dedicate at least eight hours per day. Make sure you have a clean portfolio. And if you don't have it build one, there's always a lot of things that you can say okay rebranding of this app rebranding of this website, or the way I would like to base as part of your portfolio, people can see that the way you're thinking the way you're organizing your ideas, and so on. So if you don't have a stable income or source. I mean, projects and so on. Make sure you work eight hours and getting and putting yourself there because every time I'm asked my portfolios like the website has done, totally outdated.
And one of the first things I do, every time I finish the design, I uploaded a document, and I upload or update my LinkedIn, I make sure it's totally fresh, and when people see that I wait. Carlos has done these things, and I can check this website as well. So that's the first thing the second thing is just, don't be afraid to travel that's actually amazing for design because you get to know a lot of new people, new ideas and new ways to see the world. So when you travel you get all these ideas, and you open your mind a lot, you start to understand better design and how other people behave. So, as I said, Don't be afraid. Go for it, travel, make sure you work on your portfolio to work on your things present yourself the way you would like people to see your real life. And that's it. After that is quite easy to get by.
Thomas Morrell 24:54 So what's your biggest inspiration?
Carlos Lastres 24:58 My biggest inspiration. The fact that I'm always out of my comfort zone. As I said, every day I find a new challenge. I like to go out and try new things from my Chinese, and then I found the words, only people or see that people have been put in the name in taking riding a bicycle through the city, trying new things outside all that is part of my inspiration.
I know in the western world we love the car to go everywhere. Or I encourage just when they took a bicycle, and try to take a different way. Wow, you see so many things of your city that you never, never knew they were there, you find the best coffee shop, you find the best stores. So amazing people. And it's just because we try to do something different. Right. And I find a lot of inspiration on that, and, and yeah, just things like wine for example where I like to work with light therapy, and which is totally completely different expertise from, from what I have been done in the past because they encourage you to go back to your roots.
Like when was the last time you were out, and you see a sunset? What was the last time you bought your outside CSR right? So those things that we completely forget and they is breathing in our DNA. I mean we need the sun to balance when we wake up and when we sleep, we spend the whole day inside the house. They kind of messed us up. But it's just, as I said, traveling, open your mind and remember okay we, as human beings, we, we need some things that we're forgetting and. And once you recover them as your ideas go when you see, it's just, it's a summation.
Thomas Morrell 26:42 And so what's on the horizon for you? Are you sticking around in China for a good long while?
Carlos Lastres 26:47 China is my home. Totally. I do miss Costa Rica. But, I mean, I could use, I could use live here in I like it in the challenges, and grow so fast that I want to be there, it's like, I always tell people is like I was invited to a rocket ship. And you use, you don't even say yes or no, you just want to grab a ticket and jump on. So, what is coming, you just keep learning. There is always something new to learn, improve, improve me as a person and professional.
Thomas Morrell 27:25 Nice. Love it. And so where can people go to connect with you?
Carlos Lastres 27:30 They can go to my website lastrescarlos.com Or you can put Carlos design in Instagram, on Facebook, and they can always connect on LinkedIn.
Thomas Morrell 27:42 I can't thank you enough for coming on, it is really nice talking really glad we finally got to catch up.
Carlos Lastres 27:49 My pleasure. I really have a good time and yeah always happy to share in the here more experience with other designers. Oh, the last thing I want to talk about is that when you are a good designer, always shared your designs and your idea. I have seen that designers get afraid to share their ideas because they think oh no, maybe, maybe it's not right or No, no, actually the more you share, the more you learn, So that's why I always like, share, as much as I can because I know will improve me and then I can get feedback from other people.
Thomas Morrell 28:18 And that's the show everybody thank you so much for tuning in today. If you haven't already please subscribe to the show on Apple, Spotify, Google Podcasts or anywhere else you listen to podcasts. I will be releasing a show about every other week or so, if you'd like to be a friend to the show, leaving a review or comment on Apple would be very much appreciated. Share a link to the show with your friends, or anyone else you might know who is interested in UX design. Feel free to recommend topics you'd like to hear discussed and if you have any questions about design. Design careers or anything else for that matter, you can DM me on Instagram at user flows. If you'd really like to help me out, you can visit, thomasmorrell.com/survey to let me know what you'd like to learn on the show or you're more or less. Thank you I appreciate you listening, and let's go create something.
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