About

Why User Experience Design?

What do you want to be when you grow up? From a very young age, my answer was to become an inventor (although I didn’t really know what I was going to invent). When I was 5 years old, I made a watch out of a cardboard and pretended that I could touch the watch-face to make phone calls. At the age of 8, I drew my first pair of basketball shoes with interchangeable logo swatches. It became a habit to observe my surrounding and invent cool solutions and ideas.

Fast forward to the age of 10, I moved to the US without knowing a single word in English. In order to quickly adapt to the new environment, I learned to read and understand situations from others’ perspective. As someone growing up with a cross-cultural background, I learned to be open to different ideas and that there is no single solution to a problem.

UX is the perfect intersection of my passion and life experiences. I can quickly understand the situation, or the problem, from other people’s perspective and effectively visualize ideas to resolve their pain-points.

Experiences

As an undergrad at UC Berkeley, I was fascinated to find out why people choose certain products or brands over others (e.g. what is the psychology behind people’s purchasing decision?). My senior thesis was on the topic of Cross-Cultural Consumer Behavior and Identity.

I then worked 4+ years in eCommerce and branding. During this time, I managed over 200 seller accounts from the platform side and launched 12 brands digitally as a brand manager. From these roles, I learned to collaborate with people from different departments to resolve issues and reach organizational goals.