Hi! I'm Ziyu, a graduate student at UC Berkeley, a UX designer with 2 years experience, a practicer who believe in design justice,
Something else about me:
🧠 My MBTI personality: ENTP
📖 Book I'm reading now: At the Existentialist Café
🥰 Recent obsession: Tennis!
🤔 How I Got Here, From Architecture To Product Design
Architecture school taught me lots of things. Besides architectural design, it taught me how to detect the imperceptible problems in our daily lives, and how to use innovative ways to create meaningful changes in social justice, climate, and culture. However, the changes that are made by architectural and urban design are still limited.
During my master's study at UC Berkeley, I chose new media as my focus area. Working with Climate Cabinet and Salesforce provided me with chances to explore the world outside architectural design and really impact the world through my design. After these experiences, I found my passion in Human-centered design and decided to switch my career from architectural designer to product designer.
❤️ Empathize With Users' Frustration
Having lived in Beijing, Madrid, and Berkeley, I enjoy empathizing with people from various backgrounds. My diverse cultural background makes it easier for me to be open to different voices.
Leading by designers' responsibilities, I have participated in several affordable housing projects in which I deeply empathized with the resident and stakeholders. In the Baiziwan social house project, I interviewed both residents and the city government in order to figure out the potential residents' demands and align stakeholders on the design. After I came to Berkeley, I did a research study on the challenges of affordable housing in the bay area by conducting interviews with architectural design offices, fabricators, and developers to empathize with their frustration.
Currently, I'm also collaborating with the UX research team in Salesforce on a study that aims to find what essential metrics PMs and PMMs usually use during different phases of product launches, streamline the metrics that salesforce is using now, and ollecting data for further study on this topic.
♿️ Design Is For Everyone
One of the significant attributes that I learned from Berekely is the care for everyone, which guided me to the universal design area. The design studio instructed by Chris Downey, who is a blind designer provided me a chance to design for the blinds. I also got a chance to empathize with Lucy Greco in UX research class, who is a blind Web Accessibility Evangelist at UC Berkeley. All of this raised my interest in access technology and design.
