UXwanabe

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2022 in Review

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Another year complete. Time for a year in review post! These post are mostly for my own personal reflection to keep a record for my ups and downs.

I missed my 2020 and 2021 in review, with COVID and everything around the world I was a bit depressed and frankly lost my motivation and my writing habit, luckily I am now back on track 😀

Moving to Canada

One of the biggest highlight for this year is that my wife Vivian and I had decided to move to Vancouver Canada, with me taking a master’s degree in the Centre of Digital Media. It was a big decision to make and Vivian and I had fought about this a few times and eventually we decided it was the right decision to make. 

I was looked forward to start a new life in a new country and getting closer to the NA UX scene which is way more mature than Hong Kong. Hopefully I can learn some new ideas here that I can contribute back to the UX community in my hometown.

It has been almost 4 months now since we moved here and I have started getting used to school life and the country’s slow pace. We made new friends, tried new activities (carving pumpkin, ice-skated…), saw new animals (Racoon!) and Vivian got a good animator job making a decent salary. 

Obviously not everything is sunshine and rainbow. I also saw the bad side of the city (for example, the amount of homeless people on the street shocked me when I first arrived) but so far the positive outweigh the negatives. Only time will tell whether we made the right move.

UX community building

Coming from Hong Kong where UX is still in its infancy, it had always been my dream since I became a UX designer that one day Hong Kong’s UX maturity will be able to match the states.

The challenge is that there is a knowledge gap for a lot of Hong Kong designers since the medium for most UX knowledge out there is in English, whether it is in the form of articles, videos or podcasts. Those that are less literal in English had a much harder time to cosume UX knowledge than than those that speak both languages.

Having the privilege to study abroad and speak both Cantonese and English, I see it as my duty to contribute back to the city that raised me. The plan is simple: Learn as much as I can and bring knowledge back to the community. To do so, I need to build a community first.

Hong Kong Cantonese UX scene

This was a great year for my UX community building, before I left Hong Kong I hosted a first ever Cantonese UX in-person meetup with over 80+ attendees, with the support of sponsors and senior design leaders I invited as guests, we were able to secure a venue and also provide free drinks and snacks.

If I told myself 5 years ago I will be able to pull this off I would not have believed it! I am grateful for everyone that showed up and the volunteers to make this happen.

At the same time, I was quite emotional because while I did my small part to contribute to the Hong Kong UX community, I also had to leave due to the political situation there. It was a tough choice and I always thought there were so much more potential for the Hong Kong UX scene to grow.

Eventually, I thought it through. Even-though I am not physically in Hong Kong, I can still bring the Hong Kong designers together by building virtual communities and sharing what I learned in North America, which is exactly what I did. More on that in the next section.

North America Cantonese UX scene

I kicked started my quest to create a Cantonese UX community outside Hong Kong and had good progress so far. I originally targeted Canada only but thought it would be cool to expand it to USA as well because there is also a big Cantonese community there.

I promoted the Eventbrite event on LinkedIn, around 40 people attended and 30-ish people joined the private Discord server after the event. 

So far I have created two UX communities in two places and I think it might be a good idea to write down what I learned in the future. Both communities began as an experiment and hopefully as the number grows the community will become more active and we can create a closer bond with each other.

My blog and audience

This year, I have published 2 articles:

Not the most productive year so far, but the later article was doing quite well in terms of views and comments. I guess I have hit the right spot for people and promote it on the right platform. I followed up by DMing people that read my article for feedbacks and they gave me some suggestions on what topics I should explore in the future based on the points I made in the article. 

One of the positive side effect since I invested more time in writing is that I am able to inspire more people to want to write about UX, and one designer friend of mine did just that. I am glad my humble contribution to the UX scene has sparked the interest of people. That is great, we need more quality contents!

News letter

For the most part of 2021 my news letter has been dormant, mostly because I didn’t pay too much attention to it. Initially I set it up just for fun and to learn about how WordPress works because I knew very little about blogging and building an email list. 

However, I decided to send out a 2022 wrap up news letter to my 12 subscriber by the end of December because I want to get serious of building an audience. Going forward, I hope to increase my subscriber numbers and create automated email sequence that can enage them further.

Podcast

Back in 2019 I launched a podcast called UXwanabe with the aim to help wannabe UX designers to get into the field in Hong Kong. It was a fun experiment and I learned a ton about how to interview guests, editing and a bunch of technical stuff to set up a podcast.

The response was quite positive, I had a cumulative of 653 plays (total includes all downloads and any stream of 60 seconds or more across all platforms) so far. I am quite happy with how the result turned out, considering when I first started I was refreshing the dashboard everyday hoping the listening count to increase but it only grow by single digit per day and on some days didn’t grow at all.

Moving forward, I have decided to put the podcast on pause because my priority for 2023 is to create more written content and increase my email subscriber count because in-depth content is where my strength lies.

I am also eager to explore creating YouTube video in 2023 based on my most popular articles in both English and Chinese to test the water, just another experiment I want to run to learn the in and outs of this medium.

Business

Back in March 2021, I did two coaching session for 2 people in the UX community I created. I made around USD1,000 from these sessions which made me incredibly happy, not because it was a big amount, but because it was money I made outside my 9–5. 

Throughout my life, like most people, I haven’t developed ANY money making skills. Interview skills? Sure, I showed up to an interviewed and two rounds in I have a job. Then I show up to work and collect my pay check. I am not discarding the fact that I am skillful in my design craft, but I truly believe not having business skills makes me vulnerable and is always at the mercy of someone else.

Looking forward in 2023, I will look for opportunity to productize my knowledge (could be ebook, course, coaching etc.)

Health

Sleep

I have been staying up too late at night, usually until 3 am. Not sure when did I form this habit, maybe mainly due to the fact that I don’t have to wake up early in the morning in most days as a master student. 

I believe this is bad for my health and moving forward I intended to introduce a “no-screen-time” rule 2 hours before bed and spend time on reading fictional books (Dune). Self-help is a NO for me before bed time because my brain will constantly think about work examples if I read those books.

Working out

I also did less than 10 workout this year, which is really not ideal (actually quite pathetic), working out has always been an uphill battle for me since I lost the habit. Looking forward, I aim to reintroduce this habit and hopefully get rid of my growing belly.

Hobby

My favorite hobbies are origami and video games. In late 2022, I realized I was spending too much times on video games and it didn’t achieve anything meaningful for me as I am definitely not going to become a pro-gamer or streamer. 

This also meant I did not spend enough time on origami, so I made the tough decision to delete DOTA2, my favorite video game such that I can focus on other things that has higher priority to me.

I did hold a few origami workshops for my school, but I really want to focus more on creating my original origami models, I hope in 2023 I can give it more love.

My goal for 2023

My focus for next year revolve around creating more content and having a healthy life style. Below are my main goals for 2023:

UX community building

Create at least 4 event with guest speakers from major tech companies.

My blog and audience

  • Write at least 12 high-quality article about UX 
  • 10x my subscriber list (13 subs so far)

YouTube video

Create at least 4 videos in both Cantonese and English based on my most popular articles.

Business

Launch a product (ebook, course, coaching etc.)

Health

  • Go to bed by 11.30pm
  • Go to gym at least 3 times per week

Hobby

Design 3 origami models.

Closing thought

Overall I want to rely on systems and habits rather than will power to achieve my goals. I will spend some time later to breakdown my goals into monthly and daily goals, and make sure they exists in my calendar. Knowing myself well, things that are not on my calendar will not get done.

Looking forward to revisit this article in the end of 2023 to have everything check off. Wish me luck!

2019 in Review

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2019’s goal

A quick recap on the goal I set up for last year

  1. Gain a six pack — This fails horribly. I started off the year by signing up for an F45 membership and went there regularly in the first 5 months, then my attendance rates slowly declined until I totally felt out of the gym habit. When I look for the root cause of it, I realized it has come down to my energy level being really low everyday. The reason for that is because I stay late and eat unhealthy food and the compound effects adds up. To remedy this situation, I must pay attention to my sleeping habit and what I eat. More on that in my 2020 plan.
  2. Have at least 8 hours of sleep everyday — This didn’t go well as well. I often go to bed at around 2 and I have very low energy level when I woke up. This causes me to not be able to perform well at work and I always feel tired when I go on a date with my girl-friend. I was also really tired and don’t felt like to workout after work, and since I workout less, I am less physically fit and I felt more tired. The cycle continues
  3. Publish 12 articles — I have only published 5 articles. Not that I have nothing to write about, in fact I created a lot of draft in my backlog but was unable to finish them. When my reminder rings I ignored it every time and just continued to do whatever I was doing (usually gaming/ browsing the internet)
  4. Create 2 side projects —I didn’t work on any side projects. i.e. Fold origami-boar. When I think about this I have invested my energy in 2 games that I really like right now. Dota and Hollowknight. These are extremely good games and my thirst for improvement and overcoming challenge has been injected in these 2 games.
  5. Bonus: Publish rabbit comic every week — I was actually very proud that I was able to publish a comic for my girl friend as a gift. I forced myself to work on it every day for 2 weeks and I was amazed on how much I accomplished when I was really focused.

Conclusion

2019 was a total disaster for my personal growth. When I reflected on it, I now truly see that the “Power of habit” in reverse, as in the negative habit that I built adds up until it slowly crumbles on me. All is not lost though as I also learned a lot this year in terms of what is important for me in life. As I will turn 30 this year, it is time for me to start building the positive habit to turn me into the kind of person I really want to be.

Mindset

One thing that I learned in gaming is that one must focus on the macro, the long run and not on 1 game itself. For example, if my win-rate is 60% this means that I expects I will lose 4 out of 10 games and that is okay. As long as I have above 50% win rate, I will rise to the top eventually.

To apply this mindset to life, I should constantly ask myself

Am I improving today?

Did I sleep early? Did I workout? Did I create something?

Mechanism

I am going to implement 3 mechanism that will help me. They are:

  • Do things NOW — This means that whenever there is something I want to do, I will sit done and set up systems that will make sure I will do it
  • Deadlines — Everything must have a deadline to avoid procrastination. Each deadline must then be broken down into small tasks with their own deadline. Implement checkpoints to follow through.
  • Focus on ONE thing at a time — Distraction is the main reason that cause me to unable to finish a task.

Goals for 2020

I believe the path to success relies in doing the small things well with consistency, this principle applies to life and work.

What I want to learn

  1. Learn to drive —Research the best driving school that has the highest pass rate. Deadline: End of February
  2. Learn drum — Reach out to my musician cousin and ask for recommendations. Deadline: End of February

What habits do I want to build

  1. Go to bed at 11 everyday. I will do this by printing a big sign in front of my working desk and have a calendar to track my success by putting a cross on every day I went to bed by 11.
  2. Workout habit. My goal is still to lose my belly, but to kick things off, I will start by doing 10 push ups everyday and use calendar to track my progress.
  3. Writing. My goal is the same, to publish 12 articles. I will promise myself to write 10 minutes everyday and use calendar to track my progress.

Why I write

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Last week my friend Costin asked me why I write. It was at that moment I realized I have never gave this question a deep thought that it deserved. So in the spirit of understanding myself a bit more, I have decided to find out why I write. I hope if you read it to the end, I would have somewhat convinced you to give writing a shot. Seriously, it is really fun!

This article serves 2 purposes:

  • To give me clear purpose on why I write
  • To remind myself why I started and motivate me even when I don’t feel like writing (which is every single day!)

Why do I write?

1. I want to contribute to the community

When I was a wanabe designer trying to break into the UX field, there were a lot of resources out there that helped me started and I eventually got into where I am today working in a profession that I am proud of. I am really grateful for those who shared their knowledge before me because if they didn’t, I might have never became a designer.

As I became a more seasoned designer, I came to realize that if no one continues to share what they learn and contribute to the community, the cycle of knowledge will die off. The responsibility now falls onto me to help those that were in the my shoes and help them succeed, such that our community will continue to thrive and our accumulated knowledge will be greater than those before our times.

2. Writing makes me think more clearly

As I experience life, I form observations and I form opinions. Sometimes I figured an explanation to something. Some ideas are insightful and I want to share them to the world. The problem is, such thoughts are disorganized in my head, it requires massaging. If I try to communicate my raw thoughts to the public, no one will understand me and I have wasted an opportunity.

If I want to communicate better, I have to organize my thoughts. Writing is a powerful tool to help me achieve that because writing demands structure and clarity. It forces me think hard on how to sell an idea to an audience where they can’t ask follow up questions. After reading my words, the reader either gets it or they don’t. I have one shot.

The act of writing my thoughts down forces me to solidify the fuzzy concept in my head, which in turn trains me to think more clearly in the long run.

3. Writing is good for my career

When I write online, I am demonstrating the following skills and attribute to my future employers:

  • I am a disciplined person and I am passionate about design. Publishing articles consistently takes a lot of time and commitment (1 article every month), it is not an easy task and one must therefore be very passionate and disciplined about it. My collection of design articles is the result of the standard I set for myself. I am a man for my word so you can trust me to hit deadlines.
  • I am knowledgeable about business & design. By sharing everything I know about business and design openly, my readers will have a clear idea on the knowledge I have in these areas. After all, one must thoroughly understand the topic before one can talk in depth and explain it in a laymen-friendly way.
  • I am a good communicator. Each pieces of article is my attempt to sell my thoughts to my readers. It is perfect demonstration on my ability to make arguments, explain concepts and sell ideas.

4. Writing helps me practice for interviews

Sometimes during interviews, I would get asked insightful questions that I have never thought of. That does not mean I am not smart enough, it just means I have never gave those question any thought, or I have never considered things from a different lens.

Now if I spend time to write down my answers here, it allows me to explore the answer a little bit deeper and it becomes more memorable to me. If I ever felt the need for rehearsals before an interview, I can also come back to look for things I wrote.

5. Writing makes me happy

Humans are most happy when we encounter a state of flow. As a creative person, writing puts me in the state of flow where I am so immerse of the task and have totally neglect my surroundings. I felt constantly challenged in finding different ways to express myself, while in the same-time making sure I can make my point across to my readers. It is a perfect challenge that matches my ability.

It is especially rewarding to know when someone has found my writing useful, or even reached out to me to ask for more advise. This means that I have successful achieved my goal to add value to the community, this makes me a very happy person 🙂

6. Writing offloads my memories

I have a lot of ideas, and a lot of answers to a lot of questions. If I don’t write things down, I have to come up with an answer to the same question over and over again. Keeping all my answers in the brain slowly turns them into fuzzy, messy and disorganized thought, it gets lost very easily.

The brain is not built for remembering things, it is for solving problems. When I document my thoughts down, I am putting old problems that I have solved aside such that my brain has space for new problems that comes to my way.

7. Writing is good for my personal brand

I come from Hong Kong, a place where UX is still in its infancy. Most knowledgeable UX person in Hong Kong are westerners. That is understandable because UX originates from those countries.

Almost all my knowledge about UX were acquired from leaders from the west and I look up to them, but they don’t just magically become leaders overnight. They were leaders because they share everything they learn through articles, books or talks. They slowly build up their brand one step at a time.

In order for the UX scene to grow in Hong Kong, we can’t constantly rely on oversea experts to teach us what to do, that would only carry us so far. If we truly want to grow the UX scene and has a chance to catch up with the west, we need thought leaders of our own. We need someone local. This is where I see as an opportunity for me to come in.

Once I share everything I know and have added value to the community, over time, I would be seen as an expert and have build up my personal brand. It would open more doors to opportunities, it will give new comers someone to aspire to, and we as a community would be in a better position to drive changes in the Hong Kong UX scene.

Who do I write for?

I write for 2 targeted groups in my mind.

1. Wanabe designers

They are interested into UX and have probably read some books or have taken a lesson or two about UX. For this group, I want to teach them how they can become an UX designer, but I won’t teach them the basic knowledge of UX, that is their job to figure that out.

This group of people want to know that it is possible to become an UXer and they want someone that can guide them through the process. My focus would be to teach them exactly what steps they should take that can help them land their first UX job. Some topics that will benefit this group:

  • how to prepare for your portfolio
  • how to job hunting and find the right UX jobs
  • how to prepare for the interview
  • how to networking
  • how to be confident even if you think you are not qualified — A mind set that would help you succeed.

2. Seasoned UX designers

The second group is seasoned UX designers. They have been working in the field for 2-3 years now and they are looking for knowledge that can help them climb the rank. This group wants to become a better designer such that they can take on more responsibility. Some topics that will benefit this group:

  • How to gain management support/ buy in from stakeholders
  • How to create and communicate your design process
  • How to advance to Senior UX/ Management
  • How to drive organization change
  • How to align design vision
  • How to create design principles
  • How to communicate better with programmers

Conclusion

This article is written mainly for the benefit of myself, but if you have made it this far to the article, I hope I have made you understand the benefit of writing and how it will help your career. And if this inspires you to start writing, Haleluia! Leave a comment and share with me what you wrote!

2019 The Year of Taking Control

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This is the second of my yearly review posts. I want to actively assess my life rather than just watching years slip by. Last year’s post: 2017 in review

2018’s goal

A quick recap on the goal I set up for last year

1 Find a new job — Update portfolio, actively looking for jobs/ natural networking, prepare interview questions. DONE! This is one of the greatest success in my goals, as I have been able to obtain a UX manager title and have a considerable increase in salary.

2 Gain a six pack — Work out 3 times/week, hire personal trainer. FAILED. This went extremely poorly, as I stopped working out and actually got a bigger belly 🙁

3 Have at least 8 hours of sleep, every day — Set up alarm clock at 23:00. Make myself accountable and have to lose something if I didn’t meet this goal. FAILED. This had a cascading effect on my health and relationship on people around me. As I constantly stay up late at night, I was unable to give 100% focus when I hangout with friends and in multiple occasions a lost my temper and had fights with my girlfriend.

4 Publish 12 articles — Set up schedule on calendar to publish every month.FAILED. I have only published 2 articles in 2018. I actually wrote a lot of articles and they all sit in the backlog. My writing was a little bit all over the place and I weren’t able to complete any of them.

5 Make 24 Origami models — Set up Origami time on my calendar. FAILED. I had set up systems to remind myself to create origami, but ultimately I created 0 this year.

6 Start a UX teaching course.FAILED. I did not complete any steps that would put me in a position to teach others about UX.

Reflection

Last year, I made 6 commitments at the start of the year, but I only followed through on 1 of them. I believe the main reason is that there is a lack of focus on the goals, they seem scattered and it seems like there is no strong reason for achieving them, it just made me felt good by writing them down.

This year, I’m setting 4 goals— but each goal are carefully picked to help me achieve a bigger goal, a big piture, a theme, and the theme for this year is:

The year of Taking control

I am going to implement 3 mechanism that will help me take . They are:

  • Do things NOW — This means that whenever there is something I want to do, I will sit done and set up systems that will make sure I will do it
  • Deadlines — Everything must have a deadline to avoid procrastination
  • Focus on ONE thing at a time — Distraction is the main reason that cause me to unable to finish a task.

Goals for 2019

  1. Gain a six pack — Gain control back to the shape of my body. I will start off by going to the gym 2 times a week, then slowly move to 3 times a week. I will commit to run at least 1 time a week.
  2. Have at least 8 hours of sleep everyday— Gain control back to my health and temper. I will start off my turning off my lights at 12pm, then slowly move on to 11pm.
  3. Publish 12 articles —Gain control back to something I committed. I felt a lost of control when I spend so much time writing but is unable to finish my articles. I plan to publish articles every month even NO MATTER WHAT. I will aim for consistency over quality and building a writing habit. I will do so by setting a weekly reminder to allocate time for writing,
  4. Create 2 side projects — Gain control back to something I wanted to do, and had said I wanted to do it, but is unable to follow through. I will allocate 3 hours per week to work on my side projects
  5. Bonus: Publish rabbit comic every week — This is a side goal that I enjoy doing on the side, and I hope I feel passionate continue doing it.

2017 in Review

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Another year complete. Time for a year in review post! This is the first of what I hope to be many review posts. I want to actively assess my life rather than just watching years slip by.

What Went Well

Health

I signed up from a gym member ship this year and I have been consistently going to gym 2 times a week. It is a good thing that it has now become part of my life and stuck as a hobby.

Gym 2 time/week @ Tue/Thur

Relationship

I am involved in a romantic relationship this year. My girl friend and I are currently been together for 9 months and is currently very stable. I consider having a healthy relationship as part of my Tripod of stability (Health, Relationship, Work), without those, I cannot pursue something greater.

Travel

This year, I went to Japan with my girl friend. This is the first time I plan a trip without my parents help. I enjoyed the time in Japan and I learned a great deal about what my GF likes and dislike, I believe this trip and strengthen our understanding with each other.

Finance Automation

I finally got my finance automated. It might come as a shock to someone that I did not hold a credit card under my name as I was 26 of age. The truth is I have been procrastinating about this since I was 21. The effect it has on me has been daunting. Liberating would not be enough to describe how I feel to finally did something that I should have done long time ago. Here is what I did:

  1. Set up credit card.
  2. Set up auto-pay for credit card.
  3. Set up auto-pay for Octopus.
  4. Set up auto saving account.

Writing

This year, I have published 3 articles on Medium that got quite a few attentions from the readers. I spent a lot of effort to write those articles and I consider them high quality. I am happy that someone actually read it, gave comments and liked my post, that made me feel happy and I am actually more motivated to write more this year.

Cooking

This is a great year for cooking. I started to take my cooking passion more seriously and committed to cook twice per week. The arrangement of aligning when the house maid is off (such that no one will cook at home) and my cooking schedule made it harder for me to slack off. I also met someone from the card game I played who happened to be a cook. I should consider asking for guidance from him from time to time.

What Did Not Go Well

You will see that a lot of things that didn’t go well is overlapped with things that go well, as I see there is always areas that I can do better if I push myself harder. This is the only way to be a top performer and become world class in my life.

Health

I have been staying up too late at night, for more than I wanted. I am most efficient when I get at least 8 hours of sleep and my current sleeping habit fails to achieve my goal.

Writing

In this year I have only published 6 articles. Far less than the ideal goal of 2 articles per week, and is only slightly better than last year’s 5 articles. The truth is that I had a lot of articles that I started in my backlog, but I lacked the discipline to finish them. Good things is that I do receive some positive responds from my reader.

This would be something I would continue to improve this year. I aim to double the amount of articles I published.

Origami

This was a poor year for Origami. I only created 2 turtle when my girl friend is around. When I look back I believe the reason for this is because I didn’t delegate specific time for this hobby. I should put origami as part of my calendar if I want to continue to pursuit this passion.

Work

Non of my goals of increasing salary nor getting a promotion has been met. To be honest I felt a little bit set back by the fact that the work I did was’t being valued.

I no longer feel passionate about going to work. Everyday I feel frustrated, annoyed and sometimes angry. The truth is, I have already decided that I wanted to move on, so whether I can reach my goal was more as a pride than something I really want.

On a plus side, I did learn a great deal of how to run projects and how to apply design principles in my work. I have been growing a lot in terms of design, and I do hope that the knowledge I have acquired is going to help me to find a job that I would enjoy.

Goals for 2018

  1. Find a new job — Update portfolio, actively looking for jobs/ natural networking, prepare interview questions.
  2. Gain a six pack —Work out 3 times/week, hire personal trainer.
  3. Have at least 8 hours of sleep, every day — Set up alarm clock at 23:00. Make myself accountable and have to lose something if I didn’t meet this goal.
  4. Publish 12 articles — Set up schedule on calendar to publish every month.
  5. Make 24 Origami models — Set up Origami time on my calendar.
  6. Start a UX teaching business — Go through ZTL course.

About me (2016 version)

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Hi, I am Tim Chan.

Currently, I work as an Product Design Lead in HSBC leading a team of product designers. I have designed interactive experience on Tablet that is used by branch staff, and also wealth and insurance products on both mobile and browser.

In my previous role, I spent 4 years in a startup working on a web-app that lets people create videos through drag and drop.

How I got into UX

In my pre-designer life, I had a corporate job in a phone company. While I was there, I learned a great deal about how to apply empathy to customers and see things from their perspectives. This lead to how I became an UX designer later.

I became interested into UX when the company wanted to create an app to help customer pay their bills and track their internet usage. It was a very fun project and I was exposed to the term UX for the first time. I became curious and began to dig in more about it. Soon, I became attracted to the work UX designer does and thought it would be cool if I’d become one.

I self-taught myself about UX by reading tons of books, and also joined a part-time UX course from General Assembly. I applied the things I learned in that project and created a portfolio based on it that helps me land my first UX job in a startup.

Why I love UX

It goes all the way back in high school where I did Design & Technology for my A-level. I was taught the term “Ergonomics” which in simple term means:

The process of designing products so that they fit the people who use them.

For example, if we were to design handrails in a train, what should be the handrail’s diameter? A rail that is too thick or too thin will make it difficult to grab, and this will cause problem to people. Oh, and what kind of texture should we use to increase the gripping power? You get the idea.

Learning about ergonomic changed the way I see design. I think it just make so much sense to think about who will use your product and how they will use it before you get onto the drawing board. This is the reason why I get frustrated when I see a website or any product that is poorly designed because it is clear whoever designed it didn’t put in any effort to think about who will be using it.

For years, I thought I was the only one on earth that cares about these so called “minor issues”. It frustrates me when designers are not considerate and can’t design things properly. Well, not anymore, there are people out there that are just like me and are getting paid to make other people’s life easier. It is AWESOME, I really think there isn’t a job out there that has the following descriptions:

UX designers are on a mission to create products that are functional, reliable, usable and pleasurable.

Wow, isn’t that SEXY? I want to be part of them!

Hobbies

Outside my professional life, computer and card games occupies most of my free-time. Hiking with my dog on weekends and hitting the gym twice a week is about as sporty as I can get. On my creative side, writing, cooking, and drawing comics is how I find my inner peace.

Books I read

I am a big fan of books, here is a list of books I have read since I started documenting my book collections, this list is not just limited to UX related books.

Design

  • The Design of Everyday Things — Don Norman
  • Don’t Make Me Think — Steve Krug
  • Rocket Surgery Made Easy — Steve Krug
  • Information Architecture for the World Wide Web — Louis Rosenfeld, Peter Morville
  • Forms that work — Caroline Jarret, Gerry Gaffney
  • The User Experience Team of one — Leah Buley
  • The Elements of User Experience 2nd Edition — Jesse Garrett
  • Lean UX — Eric Ries
  • Responsive Web Design — Ethan Marcotte
  • Mobile first — Luke Wroblewski
  • Designing for Emotion — Aarron Walter
  • The elements of content strategy — Erin Kissane
  • Design is a job — Mike Monteiro
  • Content strategy for mobile — Karen McGrane
  • Letting go of words — Janice Redish
  • Quantifying the user experience — Jeff Sauro, James R Lewis
  • Designing social interfaces — Christian Crumlish, Erin Malone
  • The principles of beautiful web design — Jason Beaird
  • The visual display of quantitative information — Edward R. Tufte
  • User interface for programmers — Joel Spolsky

Software design

  • Joel on software — Joel Spolsky
  • Smart and get things done — Joel Spolsky
  • The art of readable code — Dustin Boswell

Copy writing

  • Book 1 — Where Stellar Messages Come From — Joanna Wiebe
  • Book 2 — Formatting and the Essentials of Web Writing — Joanna Wiebe
  • Book 3 — Headlines Subheads and Value Propositions — Joanna Wiebe
  • Book 4 — Buttons and Click Worthy Calls to Action — Joanna Wiebe
  • Bonus Ebook — 6 Persuasion Strategies — Joanna Wiebe
  • Free Ebook — Using Psychology to boost conversion — Joanna Wiebe
  • Technical Writing Guidelines — Techprose. Ltd

Game design

Game designers has long been solving the problem of how to keep players engaged and keep coming back for more. The principles of game design is universal and timeless. Here are some of the books I read:

  • The art of game design — Jesse Schell
  • Game design workshop — Tracy Fullerton
  • Challenge for game designers — Brenda Brathwaite, Ian Schreiber

Business & Leadership

  • The effective executive — Peter F. Drucker
  • Work the system — Sam Carpenter
  • Start with why — Simon Sinek
  • Zero to One — Peter Thiel
  • The rules of management — Richard Templar
  • Competing against luck — Clayton M. Christensen
  • The innovation dilemma — Clayton M. Christensen
  • Turn the ship around! — L. David Marquet
  • The score takes care of itself — Bill Walsh
  • Project Management Book Of Knowledge — PMI (Originally I wanted to be a PMP, but then I realized I needed 3 years of project management experience in order to be qualified to take the exam. I have only read half of the book, but I have benefit greatly from the knowledge it provided.
  • Rework — 37signals
  • Getting real — 37signals
  • The 4 hour workweek — Timothy Ferris

Self development & others

  • Finding flow — Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
  • Quiet — Susan cain
  • Thinking, fast and slow — Daniel Kahneman
  • Justice: What’s the Right Thing to Do? —Michael J. Sandel
  • The war of art — Steven Pressfield
  • The art of thinking clearly — Rolf Dobelli
  • The 10x rule — Grant Cardone
  • Bird by bird — Anne Lamott
  • How not to be wrong — Jordan Ellenberg
  • Talk like TED — Carmine Gallo
  • The story teller’s secret — Carmine Gallo