Ben’s career as a designer started after he dropped out of high school with grand plans of becoming a 3D artist at Pixar. After realizing he didn’t quite enjoy it, Ben veered towards graphic and web design and began teaching himself. In 2008, Ben took a risk and jumped on the opportunity to join a new design agency, Sourcebits, as one of their very first designers. He then spent seven years leading or participating in 100+ apps—a few of which have been staff picked by Apple and Google. His work spans a wide range of industries like e-commerce, entertainment, healthcare, enterprise products and games. He’s had the honour of developing products and services for companies such as Intel, General Electric, SAP, Coca Cola, MIT Sloan, IBM and US Army to name a few. Ben has also led product design at FreshMenu, a food-tech startup where he led a small-size design team to improve the online food delivery experience. During his time there, FreshMenu expanded from a few to many kitchens across India with a net value of 24 million USD. Fast forward to a couple of years later, Ben now finds himself in Singapore heading the design team and shaping the future of customer retention ReferralCandy and CandyBar. In this episode, he shares with us his story on how he kickstarted his journey in UX and you too can do so in the current economic climate.