Interview with Yen Kai Huang

When I was a student, I was obsessed with the beauty of art and industrial design, such as automobiles, furniture, products, paintings, sculpture. It inspired me to go for a degree in design.

I design mostly for mobile apps and websites. But, I also design graphics and printings for personal projects.

They shouldn't. In fact, I think everyone should have their own path in their design career. Learn from the best people and then have your own opinion.

A good designer achieves the target their clients give them. They get the job done, which is a good thing. But, their works lack a personal opinion. A great designer put their philosophy and ideology into their works. It is very hard to do that. As a result, tackling the difficulty of finding a balance between clients and your design ideas makes one a great designer.

A good design should always be fulfilling the users'/clients' requirements. As the old cliche "form follows function" goes, I think that we all agree with that.

Good design provides a better solution or result for your client. It has several benefits: it amplifies clients' branding, it reduces the cost of production with a better solution, it makes a product more sustainable. The benefits are countless but you get the idea.

I am fond of creating a GUI for sci-fi movies. I am fascinated by the details and complications of the high-tech interface, and it is quite a joy in the process of drawing all the UI elements.

I like to make a background study before jumping into the brainstorming. Don't rush into the phase of creation. It will constrain your creativity. Do background research really helps you discover more insights and enrich the story in your design.

That will definitely be G-munk.
check their works if you have time: https://gmunk.com/

I believe that a design succeeds when it brings users an experience of joy other than just fulfilling the functionality. It could be a beautiful graphics or a convenient product feature that improves people's productivity, depending on what type of media your work is in.

Practice makes you perfect. Start practicing!

Design is a methodology for solving a problem through analysis and prototyping. It is a powerful tool that helps you achieve your target. Although different tasks of design require a different skill set, the mindset is the same.

I'm working on a project that involves machine learning in the process of design. You can see lots of people start using AI to create art and design with hyper-realistic results nowadays. So I'm studying the topics of AI and design.

I think one of the responsibilities of a designer is not to create new problems when they are solving old ones. Many people design something for the sake of design. This is just pointless. So the basic thing we can do is to not create more pollution on the earth.

Design always evolves with technology. The future of design will depend on the media that design is applied. In other words, I think we can definitely see more designs for digital products. It might be VR/AR, but we are still on an early stage of VR/AR.

Less but better.

I think they are not mutually exclusive. When enough people design the same kind of style, they shape a trend. When a trend rises, people lean to it subconsciously.

Technology helps us reduce the cost of prototyping and accelerate our speed of design iteration. We should keep an open mind and keep learning in the era of the internet.

《The Design of Everyday Things》by Donald A. Norman. It is a classic of design publication. The principles mentioned in the book are very helpful when you design.

Design is a methodology for solving a problem through analysis and prototyping. It is a powerful tool that helps you achieve your target. Although different tasks of design require a different skill set, the mindset is the same.

I am fond of creating a GUI for sci-fi movies. I am fascinated by the details and complications of the high-tech interface, and it is quite a joy in the process of drawing all the UI elements.

My favorite design will be a motion sequence concept for machine learning. Although it was an art composition for motion title, I try to visualize all the actual mechanisms behind machine learning. I spent a lot of time understanding the match and fit all the detail in the design.

The first work I did for a company is an app called "Xiabanla". It means "get off work". It was a social app for people in the workplace. When I look back, now, it is pretty clunky, but everyone has a starting point. Isn't it.

Mostly, I am more creative in the morning, and I have a better mood when I see sunshine. Honestly, I am not a "night owl". My energy just goes off at midnight. So, I prefer to get up early and get my job done before the sun goes down.

While a lot of the designers focus on the aesthetics of their works, I put more attention on the usability and user experience because of my works are digital products.

Actually, there is a concept is Psychology called "Flow". In definition, flow is a mental state, also known colloquially as being in the zone, is the mental state in which a person performing an activity is fully immersed in a feeling of energized focus, full involvement, and enjoyment in the process of the activity. In essence, flow is characterized by the complete absorption in what one does, and a resulting transformation in one's sense of time. So, I will try to get into the flow as fast as possible. It really helps me do my jobs.

I believe that a design succeeds when it brings users an experience of joy other than just fulfilling the functionality. It could be a beautiful graphics or a convenient product feature that improves people's productivity, depending on what type of media your work is in.

the first consideration should always be fulfilling the users'/clients' requirements. As the old cliche "form follows function" goes, I think that we all agree with that.

I think one of the responsibilities of a designer is not to create new problems when they are solving old ones. Many people design something for the sake of design. This is just pointless.

Design always evolves with technology. The future of design will depend on the media that design is applied. In other words, I think we can definitely see more designs for digital products. It might be VR/AR, but we are still on an early stage of VR/AR.

Several design inspiration sites, such as Pinterest, Behance, or Dribbble, help me come with up ideas. Also, I like to go to a bookstore browsing different kinds of books for more creativity.

I am now living in Beijing. It is a densely populated city where around 20M people live in this city. It is crowded, and everything comes and goes in the speed of light, which makes me gives me another point of view on chaos. While most of the designers incline to order, chaos is a pristine state in nature. Instead of resisting it, we should try to embrace it. You will be surprised by the fact that there is another order within the chaos, which share some similarity to the design we see.

At first glance, their works. Find a designer or studio that has the style of work you like. It will very painful if the designer is not good at the style you want. Then, their communication skills. Good designers will try many different ways to understand what you need and elaborate on what they want to do.

I like to make a background study before jumping into the brainstorming. Don't rush into the phase of creation. It will constrain your creativity. Do background research really helps you discover more insights and enrich the story in your design.

positive: It feels satisfying when you create something. And it feels even better when someone loves your design.
negatives: We let our work affect our lifestyle in a negative way. Sometimes, we lose track of time when we put too much attention on details that is not worthy.

Less but better.

The ability of thinking....well this is for every human beings :)

I like to break things down to small tasks and handle them according to their priority. Priority consists of two elements: importance and urgency. If a task is important and urgent, unsurprisingly, you must do it now; If it is not important and urgent, don't even think about it. The trick is to make sure you do the "important but less urgent" task every day, and try not to turn down the "unimportant but urgent" tasks as much as you can. This will make sure you put you energy on the right things.

Can you finish the changes by the end of the day? Seriously, I hate it!

It depends on the scale of a project. If it is on a large scale, I prefer to get some help; If it is a project which has sufficient time to run, I will probably do it on my own.

iamkaikai@livemail.tw