Stitching Stories, Designing Experiences: How I Found My Way to UX/UI Design

Gabriela Jessica Susilo

Mar 15

5 min read

Updated: Apr 1

There's a version of me that still exists in the quiet hours after midnight, hunched over a laptop, eyes tired but mind electric, teaching herself something entirely new. That version of me didn't know where this journey would lead. She just knew she couldn't stop.

This is the story of how a girl who grew up sketching in Surabaya, who learned to love fabric and thread, eventually found herself designing the invisible architecture of digital experiences. It wasn't a straight line. It never is.

It Started Long Before I Knew What Design Really Was

My dad had this belief, that competitions weren't just about winning. He'd sign me up for local art and drawing contests in back then when I still live in Surabaya, not to chase trophies, but to teach me something harder: how to keep going when something matters to you, even when it's difficult.

Looking back, those Saturday afternoons with pencils and paint were teaching me design before I had a word for it. Design, I'd later come to understand, isn't just about how something looks. It's about why it exists, the intention behind every choice, every line, every color. That curiosity never left me. It just kept finding new things to attach itself to.

Baby Wear and My First Brush With UX

*This was me during my early days at Oeteo, researching fabric in the Imagine Center — the space where our ideas lived on the boards behind me. Looking back, it holds many special memories.*

My first job was at Oeteo Pte Ltd, an innovative babywear brand as a product designer. On the surface, it seemed simple; fabric choices, soft textures, safe materials. To most people, that’s all it was: I am just a babywear designer creating graphic after graphic, deciding which animal would make it onto the next Spring/Summer or Autumn/Winter collection.

But the reality was far more layered than that. Looking back, it was one of the most quietly formative experiences of my life, and I am grateful of this. My role was never just about designing babywear. We spent time with parents, really listening to them. Not just what frustrated them, but why. What made daily routines harder than they needed to be? What would actually make a difference? And ultimately, who were we truly designing for?

Those conversations shaped everything. We would return to the drawing board and rethink products from the ground up, often in what we called our “Imagine Center.” It was a space for questioning assumptions and reimagining possibilities. What if babywear had no snaps, no zippers, nothing that could irritate delicate skin? What if a blanket could be designed for life on the go, folding effortlessly into a parent’s already busy routine?

We weren’t just fulfilling seasonal briefs. We were trying, genuinely, to make a small but meaningful part of a parent’s day a little easier. I didn’t have the language for it then, but now I understand, that what we were practicing was UX. I was just doing it with cotton instead of code.

As the company began growing its online presence, I was given the opportunity to step into something new: building out the e-commerce experience. Suddenly, I found myself staring at a Shopify dashboard with no clear roadmap, just curiosity and determination. So I figured it out. I read books. I took online courses after long workdays. I stayed up far later than I should have, testing layouts, refining user flows, and constantly asking myself: why does this feel clunky, and how can it feel more natural?

Those late nights were exhausting. But they were also the most alive I had felt creatively in years.

The Sleepless Nights

There's a particular kind of night that every career-changer knows. The house is quiet, everyone else is asleep, and you're sitting there building something that doesn't yet exist, a new version of yourself.

I lived in that season for a long time. After work, I'd open my laptop and dive into UX. I'd study design principles, pull apart apps I used every day, and ask why certain experiences felt effortless while others felt like fighting through mud. I fell in love with the questions. Why do people abandon a checkout cart? What makes someone trust an app enough to enter their bank details? How do you design for someone whose life looks nothing like yours?

Fashion had taught me to observe people, the way they move, what they gravitate toward, what they avoid. UX gave me a framework to turn those observations into something useful. But falling in love with a field and convincing the world you belong in it are two very different things.

The Interviews, The Doubt, and the Breakthrough

I won't romanticize this part. The interviews were hard. Again and again, I sat across from hiring managers who looked at my CV and saw a fashion designer, and couldn't quite bridge the gap to UX/UI.

Why this field? Do you have a technical background? Have you worked on any digital products before?

Each time, I came back with my portfolio. The Shopify work. The self-initiated projects I'd built at 1am just to prove to myself I could. The design challenges I'd taken on for practice, not pay. Slowly, the story I could tell became richer. The evidence became harder to dismiss.

Eventually, I got my yes. I joined a venture company called Undercurrent Technology, working across fintech and Web3, a world away from baby wear, and yet the core skill was identical: understanding people, and designing experiences that actually work for them.

One thing I learned back then, that nothing is impossible. People see you as an individual. It was hard, but you will find a place who believe that you can do it. Background is important, but one thing is important, the willingness to learn and keep improving are worth more than gold.

What I Think About AI (And Why I'm Not Afraid)

Somewhere in the middle of my UX career, the world changed. AI arrived, loudly, and suddenly everyone was asking: Will this replace designers?

I sat with that question for a long time. And the more I thought about it, really thought about it, tracing back to those childhood competitions, to the Imagine Center, to the sleepless nights, the more certain I became, that AI is just a tool. A remarkable one. It can speed up research, generate variations, automate the repetitive work that used to eat hours. But AI cannot sit across from a frustrated parent trying to dress a wriggly baby and feel what needs to change. It cannot carry the memory of a thousand small human moments into a design decision.

Empathy isn't something that you can prompt. It's built from living, watching, and genuinely caring about the people you design for. That part? That will always be ours.

What I Know Now

Design has always been about people, whether I was choosing a fabric for a baby's sensitive skin or mapping the flow of a fintech app. The medium changes. The mission doesn't.

I was grateful for the journey. The late nights were real. The self-doubt was real. The interviews where you feel like you have to prove your right to even be in the room, those were real too. But so is the moment it clicks. So is the feeling of designing something and knowing, in your bones, that it's going to make someone's day a little easier. That feeling is worth every sleepless night.