{"id":977,"date":"2020-11-23T14:12:08","date_gmt":"2020-11-23T19:12:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/hci\/?p=977"},"modified":"2026-05-05T12:36:07","modified_gmt":"2026-05-05T16:36:07","slug":"alumni-eli-fares","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/hci\/2020\/alumni-eli-fares\/","title":{"rendered":"From Engineering to UX: Eli Fares"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<section class=\"w-screen px-6 cu-section cu-section--white ml-offset-center md:px-8 lg:px-14\">\n    <div class=\"space-y-6 cu-max-w-child-5xl  md:space-y-10 cu-prose-first-last\">\n\n            <div class=\"cu-textmedia flex flex-col lg:flex-row mx-auto gap-6 md:gap-10 my-6 md:my-12 first:mt-0 max-w-5xl\">\n        <div class=\"justify-start cu-textmedia-content cu-prose-first-last\" style=\"flex: 0 0 100%;\">\n            <header class=\"font-light prose-xl cu-pageheader md:prose-2xl cu-component-updated cu-prose-first-last\">\n                                    <h1 class=\"cu-prose-first-last font-semibold !mt-2 mb-4 md:mb-6 relative after:absolute after:h-px after:bottom-0 after:bg-cu-red after:left-px text-3xl md:text-4xl lg:text-5xl lg:leading-[3.5rem] pb-5 after:w-10 text-cu-black-700 not-prose\">\n                        From Engineering to UX: Eli Fares\n                    <\/h1>\n                \n                                \n                            <\/header>\n\n                    <\/div>\n\n            <\/div>\n\n    <\/div>\n<\/section>\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image alignleft wp-image-978\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"240\" height=\"160\" src=\"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/hci\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/241\/5e56f0a453d62bdd12aa0641_EliFares_1-p-1080-240x160.jpeg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-978\" srcset=\"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/hci\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/241\/5e56f0a453d62bdd12aa0641_EliFares_1-p-1080-240x160.jpeg 240w, https:\/\/carleton.ca\/hci\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/241\/5e56f0a453d62bdd12aa0641_EliFares_1-p-1080-600x400.jpeg 600w, https:\/\/carleton.ca\/hci\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/241\/5e56f0a453d62bdd12aa0641_EliFares_1-p-1080-300x200.jpeg 300w, https:\/\/carleton.ca\/hci\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/241\/5e56f0a453d62bdd12aa0641_EliFares_1-p-1080-160x107.jpeg 160w, https:\/\/carleton.ca\/hci\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/241\/5e56f0a453d62bdd12aa0641_EliFares_1-p-1080-400x267.jpeg 400w, https:\/\/carleton.ca\/hci\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/241\/5e56f0a453d62bdd12aa0641_EliFares_1-p-1080-360x240.jpeg 360w, https:\/\/carleton.ca\/hci\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/241\/5e56f0a453d62bdd12aa0641_EliFares_1-p-1080.jpeg 612w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 240px) 100vw, 240px\" \/><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">Eli Fares<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p><em>This article is part of our Alumni Stories series, which focuses on perspectives of graduates of Carleton\u2019s Human-Computer Interaction Master\u2019s program. Today, we are talking to Eli Fares.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Before I joined the HCI Masters program, I was doing my undergraduate in Engineering at Carleton University. I discovered UX and learned about the industry when I did a co-op term at BlackBerry. I realized how important user research is and how a good experience can affect an entire company&#8217;s future as we&#8217;ve seen in the tech industry again and again. This is what made me want to do a masters in HCI. There are many stakeholders when it comes to building a product but I feel that Product Designers are the real gatekeepers of what goes in a product and what doesn&#8217;t.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Coming into the HCI Masters program, I knew very little about what UX actually was. In the span of 2 years, I was able to develop a good foundation to start my UX career with confidence. In my first role after graduating, I was already educating colleagues about best practice and how to conduct proper research so as to not waste hours and money on features customers don&#8217;t want. My entire career has been working in start-ups as the sole designer and owning every part of the design process from beginning to end. This helped build up my skills quickly. I am now a Senior Product Designer where I mentor junior designers and teach a UX Design course at a bootcamp in Toronto.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Feel free to <a href=\"http:\/\/www.linkedin.com\/in\/elifares\/\">connect with me on LinkedIn<\/a> or learn more about my work on <a href=\"https:\/\/www.elifares.com\/\">my website<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image aligncenter wp-image-996\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"240\" height=\"135\" src=\"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/hci\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/241\/eli_work-240x135.png\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-996\" srcset=\"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/hci\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/241\/eli_work-240x135.png 240w, https:\/\/carleton.ca\/hci\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/241\/eli_work-160x90.png 160w, https:\/\/carleton.ca\/hci\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/241\/eli_work-768x433.png 768w, https:\/\/carleton.ca\/hci\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/241\/eli_work-400x225.png 400w, https:\/\/carleton.ca\/hci\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/241\/eli_work-360x203.png 360w, https:\/\/carleton.ca\/hci\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/241\/eli_work.png 1024w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 240px) 100vw, 240px\" \/><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">Eli&#8217;s final UI design for Freenics Inc. access control application<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This article is part of our Alumni Stories series, which focuses on perspectives of graduates of Carleton\u2019s Human-Computer Interaction Master\u2019s program. Today, we are talking to Eli Fares. Before I joined the HCI Masters program, I was doing my undergraduate in Engineering at Carleton University. I discovered UX and learned about the industry when I [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":978,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-977","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-alumni"],"acf":{"cu_post_thumbnail":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/hci\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/977","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/hci\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/hci\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/hci\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/hci\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=977"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/hci\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/977\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1085,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/hci\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/977\/revisions\/1085"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/hci\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/978"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/hci\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=977"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/hci\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=977"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/hci\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=977"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}