This is my story.

How did you fall in love with UX design?

I was in the fourth grade when I discovered this game called Dark Cloud. One of my favorite mechanics in the game involves having to rebuild the towns and villages. The locals each had very specific requests when it came to the location of certain buildings and landmarks to help make their lives easier. And as a kid, this was the sort of challenge where I rolled up my sleeves and worked diligently on – and probably devoted around 200 hours doing this.

Around the same time was the heyday of Myspace (who else remembers Myspace?). One of the features that made Myspace addicting for me back in the day was the ability to customize your own profile. Because of that, I ended up learning a bit of HTML and CSS back in the day to customize my own. And, shortly after, I was designing and customizing profiles for a few of my friends as well and I loved it.

Of course, at the time, it didn’t even cross my mind that both were examples of UX design. But in the end, being able to help others and seeing the impact of what I do are two of the main reasons why I ended up falling in love with it.

What are some hobbies you enjoy doing outside of designing?

When I’m not thinking about my next design project, you can usually find me doing one of the following:

• Reading a book on a bench at a nearby park. I make it a goal of mine to read at least 3 books per year.

• Playing one of the games from my every growing backlog of video games I need to finish!

• Driving around the city looking around for my next photograph subject and inspiration.

• Attending poetry slams and other forms of open mic nights.

• Planning my next travel destination.

• Binge watching the latest Korean drama.

• Trying out the latest drinks at the nearby boba shops! You can never drink enough boba in life in my opinion.