Designing in the wild: Simple tools for feeling more grounded as a designer

Hosted by IxDF Johannesburg
Jun 5th, 2025
6:30pm - 8:00pm (UTC +02:00)
Entelect, Floor 2, 3 Melrose Boulevard Melrose Arch Johannesburg, South Africa, Johannesburg
18 IxDF Members (and some non-members) are attending
This is a free Local Group meetup
Attendance is free.
You don't have to be a member to attend.
What are Local Groups?
Local Groups will expand your career network—whether you are interested in learning new skills, finding job opportunities or looking for a new employee.
A Local Group is a group of people who, like you, are passionate about design. Local Groups organize meetings to get inspired, have fun and learn from one another.

Meetup Details

© Interaction Design Foundation, CC BY-SA 4.0


The talk will explore how early-career designers can find their feet while navigating ambiguity, pressure, and imposter syndrome. Rooted in real stories from many South African UX professionals, the session will share simple, practical tools to help you feel more grounded, build confidence, and work better with your team. You’ll walk away with ideas for handling feedback, managing stakeholder dynamics, and making a difference – even when you're still finding your voice.

About the speakers:
Vicka Petrishko and Caitie Boeyens
Design Entrepreneurs and Recovering Imposters

The talk will explore how early-career designers can find their feet while navigating ambiguity, pressure, and imposter syndrome. Rooted in real stories from many South African UX professionals, the session will share simple, practical tools to help you feel more grounded, build confidence, and work better with your team. You’ll walk away with ideas for handling feedback, managing stakeholder dynamics, and making a difference – even when you're still finding your voice.

Vicka is the founder of Leanseed, a young company specialising in human-centred business consulting. She works with teams and organisations to improve their effectiveness and create meaningful, impactful outcomes. Her career spans 22 years in web, digital, eLearning, user experience, systems, process, and business design.

Caitie is a multidisciplinary designer with a background in product design, project management, and software development. After years of managing junior designers and developers, she made the call to shift back into hands-on design work, focusing on UX design.

Vicka and Caitie collaborate on multiple projects and are passionate about helping new designers find their feet, build confidence, and grow the soft skills that make a real difference in the workplace. They’ll share what they’ve learned from working across disciplines and industries – and what they wish they’d known when they were starting out.

Join us online or in person at Entelect in Melrose Arch.

Meetup Conversation

Hi all! Please use this conversation thread to discuss Designing in the wild: Simple tools for feeling more grounded as a designer held on Jun 5, 2025. Feel free to ask questions about the place, date and time, agenda of the meeting, or anything else.
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Local Leaders of IxDF Johannesburg

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