My interest in UX design started during my time in the army. I had a friend who was majoring in UX design before he started his service and shared a lot about what he does. I’ve always been fascinated by the idea of being in another person’s shoes when it came to interpersonal relationships. Naturally, I was drawn to the concept of creating solutions to other people’s problems by actually watching what they do and listening to what they think and say.

After my days in the army, I had a chance to work for a mobile gaming company before coming back to school. I was in charge of customer relationship management. Over that summer I found out how fun and fulling it is to listen to users’ feedback, make tweaks accordingly and receive an email saying thank you. (It was a word puzzle game so most of the users were very nice grandmas.)

When I came back to school, I was disappointed to hear that my school does not have a separate UX department. The industrial design department offered a course every semester on user experience design, but it was very limited. I went on to find ways to develop myself as a UX designer. I started reading articles and portfolios from students who were majoring in UX design or human-computer interaction at other schools. I bought and read books related to user experience. It turned out that the creative design process of UX design was not too different from that of industrial design, except that it involved more extensive research. From that day on I keep trying to push myself to pursue a career as a UX designer. I tried working as a freelancer to gain more field experience and see how it is like to work with a programmer. I’ve worked on projects with students from a different school. I took a class at another university on UX.

Aside from these academic efforts, I try to stay curious about what and why others say or behave in a certain way in my daily life. I read essays and novels to understand and spare time to think about why the author wrote such things. I believe this habit of empathizing will help me with my design practice, interpersonal relationship and the ability to work as a team.