Why I chose to become a designer

Introduction: Why writing this now

As a young designer who has came into the field with some hopes and expectations, it is inevitable to face the reality that real job has reigned on me. Having encountered what it really is like to work as a designer these days, I saw myself losing my own identity and forgetting about why I came into design in the first place. I needed to pause for a second and put down on paper what it is that I wanted from my design career and why I wanted to become one in the first place.

I found out about design when I took a course called ‘Strategies for Urban livability’. The course totally flipped around my view on architecture and cities. Beyond the aesthetics of the space and the architecture, I was astounded by how observing people on the street, thinking about how the built environment affects the lives of people can be designed with intention. I resonated with this based on my experience of moving from a megacity Seoul to a small town Williamsburg, Virginia. Those were the dark times of isolation and loneliness due to lack of infrastructure reliant on driving to get to places. During the course, I observed the people on the street, counted number of bicycles and talked to people to learn about their experience. This was so different from my textbook based learning and involving people felt very tangible.

Designing cities to benefit the inhabitants needed to involve understanding the citizens, their interactions with each other and the infrastructure and many layers of elements that influence the lives in the city. Just like we need to understand the users of the product in the product design world, deciding who designs the city for whom was all part of the design process.

My expectations as a young student

I went to college thinking that I would go to pharmacy school. It was a solid path for stability as an immigrant. But having came back from Denmark, I kept questioning why I liked this course so much. At this time, I was still a sophomore in college and was exploring many options. I wanted to do chemistry one day, sociology one day, and psychology the other day. With the intention of going to architecture school, I just made my own major combining public health and urban studies that cross pollinated between studies of community health, architecture, and urban studies. I did not know what I was doing but it was definitely the nature of interdisciplinary studies that kept me interested and curious. Looking back, connecting dots and designing based on those insights was the common thread that I gravitated toward.

Design as a lens and a tool

This was all really cool but I really did not know what to do about them without becoming an architect. Then another course on design thinking opened up my eyes to product design. Product design was exactly like what I had imagined to apply research on people to product instead of architecture and cities. Considering myself as a multipotentialite with so many interests, hobbies and industries, product design seemed like a good choice to explore all my interests through design. I started to see design as a lens to explore, ask questions and frame problems and a tool to do something about the problem.

Designers seemed like magicians that turns something into a beautiful solution but good design came with a school of thought and there was strategies behind the execution. There are so many ways to solve problems but design offered tools to make these decisions. Being a multipoentialite with so many interests, design gave me the permission that it’s okay to be a generalist and i decided gain the skills to become comfortable with the unknown and become a better decision maker and a doer.

So with this context, I would like to share some of the core skills I continue to develop as a designer:

1. Being comfortable with the unknown

As someone who felt uncomfortable with the ambiguity, I was deeply frustrated by the uncertainties in life. It was naive for me to think that everything would be figured out once I graduate from college. In order to live the life, i had to adapt and get more comfortable with the unknowns. Good designers know how to make the unknowns more concrete and tangible. Whenever a project starts, designers need to understand where the project stands. Knowing the context of what the problem is, where it is happening in the system, what it is we ultimately wants help us make a first draft of ‘this is what we could try’. We first need to gather all the ingredients before we get to the cooking.

Another best way to embrace the unknown is to ask questions. Designers need to be comfortable with not having answers yet and generating questions. The Right Question Institute that specializes in teaching students to tackle problems by generating questions, not solutions use the “question-storming” method, generating as many questions rather than solutions. They generate at least 50 questions about the problem that’s being ‘stormed.’ As those questions are written down for everyone to see, other members are paying attention and thinking of a better question. I like this method because it brings the mindset of being curious and focusing on just that.

2. Prototyping to communicate and test your ideas

During my time in design school, we had a motto: "No prototypes, no meeting." This meant that we were encouraged to create a prototype before meeting for any group projects, or even when working on projects by ourselves.

As an introvert who found communication challenging, learning to use prototypes to convey my ideas was a humbling experience. Prototyping can help you communicate your ideas more effectively. With a physical prototype, you can show others what you're thinking. This can be especially helpful when working with a team or explaining an idea to someone unfamiliar with it.

Prototyping is a crucial step in testing your ideas. It can also help you overcome the pressure and fear of striving for perfection. During stressful critique periods in school, many students become discouraged and take negative feedback personally. However, I learned to separate myself from my work and view each piece as a prototype of sorts. The feedback was about the work itself, not about me as part of the iterative process. This helped me become more open-minded and focus on improving my work. While this process can be tiring and can be constrained in real-life projects, it has opened up my perspective that products are never truly finished, and that is okay. It is just part of the process. Prototyping is a way to embrace the unknown and to learn from your mistakes. It is a way to test your assumptions and to get feedback that can help you create a better product.

3. Participatory design and empathy

The biggest factor in deciding to come into design was because I really enjoyed doing research and applying that to design. It was really cool to see design making an impact when backed with research. For any projects you do, understanding the users, stakeholders and the ecosystem is like a ritual for having more empathy for our users. As a designer who works in the government space, often times I am faced with challenges to interview users or even conduct research. As much as designers have the pen to influence users’ experience directly, who leads this change, who gets to participate in these conversations around change and how success is measured are areas that impact the consequences of design. Therefore, I want to become better at engaging the people who will not only use the products of design but also those who will be impacted by the design.

Design is a craft and becoming a designer is a journey that needs continuous introspection, feedback and learning. I might be a very different designer in the next 5 years from now but I want to continue to embody theses principles that I value. If you have any other values that are important to you, please feel free to share!