Sharina Khan is the Lead Consultant and Experience Designer at Thoughtworks, with six years of experience in this domain and over ten years in Product Design and Development as a practitioner and educator.
She is actively involved in the Design Community, conducting design, business and innovation workshops, classes and events with a focus on educating and sharing design methodologies to better engage both designers and non-designers in co-creation activities.
Khan continually updates her skills with industry-specific tools in a technology-driven and experience-based economy. She is a regular contributor of articles for e27 (you can read her thought leadership articles here).
In this candid interview, she talks about her personal and professional life.
How would you explain what you do to a five-year-old?
I help people do things better and faster with their phones and computers.
What has been the biggest highlight/challenge of your career so far?
Switching careers and going back to school to sharpen my UX skills after being a lecturer. While losing financial freedom was initially tough, reskilling was a worthwhile investment.
How do you envision the next five years of your career?
At the larger design community level, I do enjoy mentoring. I’m still teaching part-time to design students in a polytechnic, which allows me to keep engaged with our youths and work with them to ensure they’re equipped with industry-relevant skills.
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Professionally, I want to see myself playing more of an advisory role at work, where I can play a significant impact in shaping projects from a strategic level. I have a keen interest in the social sector to see how we can work on proactive actions. As Benjamin Franklin said, an ounce of prevention is better than a pound of cure.
What are some of your favourite work tools?
Pen and paper — I know it’s very traditional, but I think faster, and it helps me mentally engage with the information better.
What’s something about you or your job that would surprise us?
What might surprise most people is that I’m a proud mother of three who still loves the adrenaline of speed and fast cars!
On top of that, taking the risk to switch careers and upskill while juggling motherhood is the most surprising thing about my job. It only speaks to the work-life balance at Thoughtworks and how nurturing and inspiring the culture is here through all the opportunities it has provided me.
Do you prefer WFH or WFO, or hybrid?
I prefer hybrid work.
Where brainstorming and discussions are needed, I prefer having them face-to-face as it tends to be more productive and dynamic. You get things done much faster, reducing the need to go back and forth.
Also, I love the use of big whiteboards in the office for such discussions – for me, it sparks creativity through a more hands-on approach. I prefer working from home for work where I’m required to have a greater focus time.
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However, whenever I need to map out my thought process or complex business flows, I’ll still head to the office, book a room with a whiteboard and start mapping my thoughts visually. I need to see how things connect.
I approach work differently depending on the nature of my tasks, so I split my time between the office and home. Therefore, the hybrid working arrangement is my most productive and preferred working style.
What would you tell your younger self?
Be hungrier and bolder to explore a variety of industries.
Can you describe yourself in three words?
Eager, passionate and a risk taker.
What are you most likely to be doing if not working?
Travelling the world, exploring various cultures and cuisines.
What are you currently reading/listening to/ watching?
I love binging on European investigative films, as I see a lot of relevance to my work. As designers, we are constantly trying to uncover underlying issues, connecting the dots through mapping out journeys and interviewing users, similar to the work of detectives and investigators.
In parallel, I have also been reading about the various milestones of my child. Four months ago, we welcomed a new addition to our family, so it helps to refresh my memory as I go through the different stages of motherhood all over again.
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