Growing up, I was naturally introverted and spent a lot of time observing the world around me, listening, and noticing patterns in how people interacted with things. That curiosity eventually led me to study Cognitive Science. During college, a friend gave me a copy of The Design of Everyday Things by Don Norman. I was fascinated to discover that there was an entire field dedicated to designing products around human behavior. At the same time, I had always been deeply interested in multimedia art, one of my pieces was even exhibited at the Long Beach Museum of Art. I recognize that art and UX design are very different disciplines. Art can be intentionally ambiguous, UX, on the other hand, is much more direct. It focuses on systems thinking and designing experiences that are easy to understand. What connects the two for me is creativity. UX allowed me to bring together my curiosity about human behavior with creative problem-solving to design experiences that make complex systems feel intuitive for people.

​​I care deeply about UX and product design because, at the end of the day, experiences are what we truly carry with us. Physical products can break, become outdated, or be replaced, but the experiences we have with them stay with us much longer. What people remember are the stories connected to using a product: how easy it was, how it supported them in a moment of need, or how it made them feel. That perspective is what motivates me as a designer. I’m not just thinking about the interface or the feature itself. I’m thinking about the experience someone walks away with and whether it made their life simpler, clearer, or better in some meaningful way.

I particularly enjoy the early stages of design, building context and deeply understanding user needs to ensure we’re solving the right problem, not just jumping to solutions. This also requires understanding the broader business context: the company’s goals, value proposition, and direction. Collaboration is another aspect I value highly. In many ways, human progress from simple tools to the technologies we use today has been driven by generations of shared knowledge and collaboration. While visual design and delight are also important. Color, layout, and motion can shape how people feel when using a product, however I believe strong foundations come first. That means aligning with business goals and grounding the solution in core usability principles so the experience is clear, intuitive, and works as intended.

It depends on the stage of the product. For early-stage products, where the problem space is still being defined, user and customer research are critical. Research helps validate whether we’re solving the right problem and uncover the pain points that matter most to users. From there, especially in B2B contexts, we identify which of those problems customers are actually willing to pay to solve. By combining user insights with cost and value analysis, the most impactful and viable pain points often become the product’s north star. In more mature companies, the dynamic can be different because the business goals and metrics are often already defined by leadership. In those cases, my role as a designer is to focus on the user needs that most directly align with those business goals. Every design decision should then connect back to both improving the user experience while clearly supporting the business’s strategic objectives.

I use AI across several stages of the design process to move faster while still keeping human oversight. For writing, I use LLMs to ensure messaging is concise. For building context around a problem space, I use Perplexity. For user research synthesis, I use Dovetail to help analyze interviews, usability tests, and qualitative insights. For early prototyping and concept exploration, I experiment with Figma Make and Claude Code to quickly test different layouts and interaction ideas. I’ve found these tools useful in early stages when exploring multiple design directions or demonstrating complex interactions like drag-and-drop behaviors that can be time-consuming to prototype manually. That said, AI still has limitations. When generating more polished designs, it can sometimes make changes that weren’t prompted. I also often see quality issues (“AI Slop”) such as small spacing inconsistencies, deviations from the design system, missing input validation, or security considerations. Because of this, I find AI most valuable during early exploration and prototyping, while the final design work still requires careful human review and refinement. When used strategically with clear prompts and human oversight AI helps free up more time to focus on higher-level problem solving and strategy.