How I rediscovered my UX passions from a working trip

UX Diary#4: Nonprofit UX & Designer self-recharge

As a UX newbie coming from an engineering background, the most frequently asked question I got is — Why UX?

When preparing for the job interviews, I reflected on my academic interests, exciting class projects and internship experience — basically anything would be professionally UX-related.

But I felt… Something was missing.

It is okay to feel lost

1 year and a half ago, I came to Ann Arbor with my excitement of starting a brand new chapter of my designer life. However, now I can rarely remember WHAT exactly I had been always excited about. One-after-another class projects, endlessly heavy snowy days and struggling job hunting process… I felt constantly lost and panicked in the swamp of my inner stress.

Lost in snow and my inner stress | Illustration by Emory Allen

Especially with graduation is coming, the stress piled up even more. During a coffee chat, my friend told me, “You look so stressful. You should take a break!”

It stroke me. I had been grasping myself so hard that I could not even breathe. It was the same situation that I, as a designer, had been constantly warned of — it is dangerous to get too attached to your work to see it through. I had been working with so many non-UX-professionals to convince them of taking a step back to the natural workflows before jumping to a solution right from a claimed problem. And I realized that I was doing exactly the same!

So I decided to take a break. Away from my routined hustle and bustle to take a deep breath. I with a friend reached out to an art nonprofit in San Francisco to offer a UX pro bono during our spring break week.

A unique UX experience with a nonprofit

Our project proposed was to redesign ArtSeed’s WordPress website for more action-driven information architecture. We started with understanding the users.

Teaching UX to non-experts

After presenting findings from comparative analysis of nonprofit websites, I realized that building a new website template from scratch sounded intimating. Since the current website WordPress built in 2012 was not the major media channel for participant engagement, everything about building a new website was totally new to ArtSeed staff members. They were excited about the idea of increasing their impact scale with a new website but concerned about losing the sense of Grassroots with a modern new design.

By interviewing staff, volunteers, artists and a parent of a student participant, I found that regardless to what extent they understand the organization’s missions, they were all convinced to get onboard by Josefa’s inspiring passions of helping and sharing in person. And their understanding of the missions grew over time.

I was presenting to ArtSeed board members in their office

It was just like the name of the organization — ArtSeed. It planted a seed of art potential by participating, grew more skills more than learning the art and finally shared the fruit of self-expression with a wider audience.

Co-design with stakeholders

I was confident to restructure the site navigation and website browsing experience by frequent check-in with working staff for sustainable technical maintenance but not so much when it came to the branding of Grassroots.

We got full exposure of every aspect of the organization within 5 days from teaching an after-school art class, facilitating art-making in the art studio, repairing art pieces to preparing an art exhibit. However, none of us would be better than an insider.

Brainstorming branding design with volunteer artist

Thus, I walked a volunteer artist through my envisioned user journey from exploring, growing to share. Together, we brainstormed different design elements. We were all glad that his illustration cooperated well with the overall design to show genuineness.

Recharge from the original shape of passions

The reason I chose to work with an art nonprofit stemmed from my interests of recreating a snapshot of the essence of life beauty. I may not be a talented artist but it depicted my emotional touch with the outer world well since I was young.

And it turned out to be a rewarding week to work with ArtSeed, an art education nonprofit that connects the youth and vulnerable communities with local artists through mentorship in San Francisco. By working side-by-side with the founder Josefa, I was deeply impressed by her strong focus towards her goals.

Josefa as a mentor herself

Healing herself by art from a traumatized family while witnessing her sister going down an opposite life path, she held a strong belief that art would be capable to guide people to recognize and embrace themselves and fight back whatever life challenges.

Driven by the strong belief of healing with art, Josefa engages different specialized artists with teaching, art practicing opportunities, and offers a trusting and welcoming space for students to learn the art. And It was illuminating to learn that almost everyone discovered their new potential that they did not expect before starting the journey.

It is not about everyone working towards exactly ONE goal but everyone achieves their own life goals by working together.

Yes. That is what I always want to do. I want to help people feel empowered on the way of achieving their unique goal by my design. They might not realize what they are capable before trying. But I want to invite them to go on the exploratory journey for greater personal potential.

Reconnect the dots

There is a saying that “traveling is getting away from one’s tedious routine life for another one that someone else is sick of”, which I do not agree.

I love traveling not just because my brain needs new stimuli. Traveling is always healing, distressing and illuminating for me. It is not only because of my curiosity of the rich culture and life beliefs hidden at the corners of the streets but also a self-exploratory session to reconnect myself with the world.

And experimenting with art for me is also healing. Thanks for this trip, my love of traveling and art practice united in San Francisco. More importantly, I proved it to myself — I am capable to contribute to spreading the healing power of art with my strengths of design.

my first oil painting as a memory stamp for SF

Now when I am typing on the flight to Ann Arbor, I had never felt more determined before — I want to become a UX designer with the passions of connecting people with their great potential.

Thanks for reading!

Check out my portfolio for my UX case studies and Instagram for my latest painting experiments.