Interview with Yanwen Hu
Yanwen is an award-winning designer specializing in user experience, data visualization and graphic design.
Designer of the Day Interview
22 May 2018
I started painting since I was six then I decided to study design in college. After that I went to New York for Master program. Later I was working for Conde Nast, where I had chance to work closely with lots of famous magazines.
My parents were majoring in science and engineering so they were a little bit hesitated about my decision. They felt I should be a scientist or an engineer. But I love painting since my childhood, so they are supportive and encourage me to do what I want.
I am always obsessed with complexity of structures and patterns. That is why I am doing data visualization because I like charts and numbers. I feel the visualization shows the beauty of statistics.
For most of my work, design is not my first step. Most of time I will write down my feeling when the feeling hits me. The words are more abstract and linear, while the visual language has more dimensions. In my work I am trying to explore the both parts.
I think the logical thinking coming from my parents' background definitely influences me a lot. In my daily work as a lead UX designer, I like reading metrics by myself.
User Experience Design is my dream design field. It is hybrid, including information architecture, interaction design, visual design and research. It is a great area that I can integrate both my design aesthetics and logical thinking together.
Explore the world and discover yourself. Know what you like and what you are good at.
Embrace every opportunities and do not say "no" to yourself at the beginning.
My daily work is quite busy. Now there are lots of meetings with stakeholders which means I have less time designing compared to the past; on the other hand, I learnt a lot about business directions and product strategies, which are helpful for design. Sometimes you really need to see the vision, then you can evaluate and execute the idea.
I am reading tech and design blogs during my commute. In the technology industry, everything changes so fast. Even for designers, it is important to know the new techniques and trends.
Definitely designers will evaluate any products or projects from aesthetic standpoint, but most importantly is whether it makes sense to its users. Balancing the aesthetics and utility is one of my rules to evaluate projects.
To be honest, design is never FULLY ready. Everyday you can still find some parts in the design that you want to change. But for work, you need to launch your products. So it is essential in work to collaborate with other team members like Product Managers and Developers and prioritize design by different phases. No product can launch all the features at the same time.
My most favorite work is 5000 Years Chinese History Visualization, which is my college capstone project. That time I spent nearly one year researching history, which I am always interested in. I really appreciate my school gave me one year to explore the things I love.
I likes German and North European Design since I was in school. Also I am really into the data visualization published by the New York Times. Actually that was one of the reason I decided to move to New York for my graduate school.
Beijing is my hometown, which is the capital in China. It is a fast-growing city and has over 20 million population. I think that might make me try to discover the beauty of complexity. There are lots of things going on and they are all connected in some ways.
As a UX designer, I believe the best product coming from a perfect "triangle:" design + technology + business/product. Design's mission is to find and push for the features that are benefit for users; technology is about the current technique capability whether we can make the product come true; while business is about when and how we can make the products survive in the reality.
I always feel local design communities are so helpful. I was serving as a mentor for NXPA NYC last year and my mentee was still in school. We kept talking for almost half a year, about her portfolios, interviews, jobs, future career, etc. The responsibility as lead designer is not just designing, but also mentoring. I even learnt a lot from helping her.
I think the most impressive part is how A' Design Award is keep connecting you to multiple activities.
Design Legend Interview
24 April 2017
I studied Visual Communication Design at Tsinghua University in Beijing, China. Then I got a scholarship to pursue an MFA degree at Pratt Institute in New York, USA.
I studied painting since I was 6 years old and won several China national painting awards when I was little. From that time, I discovered that art and design are my true passions.
Unlike my parents who both majored in Science and Engineering, I am always interested in visual languages, and eventually, I decided to be a designer.
I am interested in User Experience Design, Data Visualization, Infographic, Book Design and Graphic Design.
Learning from your peers; taking challenges as opportunities; being open-minded.
Whether this designer has a clear long-term career goal and how he/she influences younger designers.
Good design should receive positive feedbacks from both designers and its audiences.
Design builds the bridges between audiences and brands. Good design can benefit both parties, eventually, affects societies.
A series of infographics illustrating the relationship between design, business, and engineering in the technology industry.
Research projects focusing on design principles and methodologies.
An organized design process.
Jingren Lu, Edward Tufte, Donald Norman, John Maeda
"We Feel Fine" by Jonathan Harris.
His work aims at exploring human emotion from weblogs all over the world. It picks up the emotional words in the phrases “I feel” and “I am feeling,” and expresses them in a visually attractive system.
His work aims at exploring human emotion from weblogs all over the world. It picks up the emotional words in the phrases “I feel” and “I am feeling,” and expresses them in a visually attractive system.
5000-Year History of China. It is a big challenge to visualize the huge amount of uncountable historical data.
Talking to peers and asking their objective opinions on you.
Data Scientist or Architect.
Design is to build the bridges between two separated things.
Professor Jingren Lu. He was my college thesis advisor, who encouraged me to study design in the United States.
Always asking myself who I want to be as a designer.
Trying to find my career path as a designer.
Maintaining the voice of design but speaking from your audiences' perspectives.
A series of infographics illustrating the relationship between design, business, and engineering in the technology industry.
A designer who can present the design's value in the technology field.
Opinions from cross-culture perspectives.
I am currently working for Moda Operandi leading the design of their internal systems. It is exciting to see how technology and design are changing the fashion and luxury industry.
More collaborations and sharings across different countries and cultures.
The leadership in technology innovation.
Research.
Knowing where you want to go, then you can find how to get there.
Technology makes design come true.
Adobe Creative Cloud, Sketch, and other prototyping tools.
Respectful.
My supervisors. They taught me how to launch a design in the reality.
Donald Norman's Emotional Design.
Doing some side projects to extend my skills.
Design leaders working in different industries. I want to know how they set the position of design in their areas.
Blue and orange, historical towns, hot pot, autumn, reading and collecting books.
My dad, who studied Physics before, still does not understand what my job is.
When my developers told me that they are so proud of building my design, I felt really honored and motivated.
I knew I love colors and painting, but I did not the difference between being an artist and a designer.
Designer Interview
24 April 2017
I studied painting since I was 6 years old and won several China national painting awards when I was little. From that time, I discovered that art and design are my true passions. Unlike my parents who both majored in Science and Engineering, I am always interested in visual languages, and eventually, I decided to be a designer. I studied Visual Communication Design at Tsinghua University in Beijing, China. Then I got a scholarship to pursue an MFA degree at Pratt Institute in New York, USA.
I am currently working as a Senior UX/UI Designer at Moda Operandi in New York, which is a global online luxury retailer.
"Design" is to build the bridges between two separated things.
I am interested in User Experience Design, Data Visualization, Infographic, Book Design and Graphic Design.
"We Feel Fine" by Jonathan Harris.
His work aims at exploring human emotion from weblogs all over the world. It picks up the emotional words in the phrases “I feel” and “I am feeling,” and expresses them in a visually attractive system.
His work aims at exploring human emotion from weblogs all over the world. It picks up the emotional words in the phrases “I feel” and “I am feeling,” and expresses them in a visually attractive system.
Glamour Beauty's site lipstick.com's Slideshow template.
Books and websites.
Sketching on papers.
Collecting and sorting information, then narrowing down the design concepts based on the analysis.
Pleased and satisfied.
Maintaining the voice of design but speaking from your audiences' perspectives.
Good design should receive positive feedbacks from both designers and its audiences.
Designers should use their skills to improve people's lives and change the prejudices.
Design might exist in more media because of technology, but its methodologies are unchanged.
2014, "Pending Exhibition," All Things Project Gallery, With 19 other designers, NEW YORK/USA.
I have my personal digital inspiration "library" collecting the design I found in exhibitions or online.
Designing a complex structure to make audiences easy to use the products.
I currently live in New York, the United States, but I am originally from Beijing, China. The cross-culture background definitely influences my thinking and design.
Most of the time I work as an in-house designer collaborating with other teams, like engineering, product, and QA.
Talking to the designer personally to see whether both of you share the similar understanding on the upcoming project.
Research, paper sketches, design iterations and testing.
A vase I got from MoMA, antique lamp, wall bookshelf, hand-made glasses, hand-drew cups.
On weekends I usually go to the coffee shop downstairs and spend several hours reading books or writing blogs there.
Learning from your peers; taking challenges as opportunities; being open-minded.
Positive: being a designer allows you to dream big every day;
Negative: being a designer also need to find ways to make dream come true.
Negative: being a designer also need to find ways to make dream come true.
Trust yourself but also being open-minded at the same time.
Adobe Creative Cloud, Sketch, and other prototyping tools.
An organized design process.
Depends on the scale of the project. It might vary from one day to one year.
What is User Experience Design?
When I served as a User Experience Designer at Conde Nast Digital, I worked on multiple global brands' website redesign projects, including Glamour, Conde Nast Traveler, Epicurious, Teen Vogue and Golf Digest. Those projects have been nominated by the Webby Awards in 2015 and 2016.
Lenovo, Glamour, Conde Nast Traveler, Epicurious, Teen Vogue, Golf Digest, W Magazine, Self, Moda Operandi, etc.
Infographic and data visualization. I can use design skills to illustrate my point of views.
Participating multiple international conferences.
Most of the time I lead the design by myself, but I do collaborate with other designers on some projects.
A series of infographics illustrating the relationship between design, business, and engineering.
yanwenhu76@gmail.com