There are many keywords surrounding me. Here I want to share with you how I embarked on the road of design and some of my hobbies.
Many people were surprised to hear that I majored in Translation in my undergraduate. "Why and how did you switch your career path?" Well, it' is a long story. I actually like designing since I was a child.
I was born in Taiyuan, Shanxi. When I was a child, I liked watching the runway very much. Like many children, I like graffiti. At that time, I dreamed of being a fashion designer.
But the older you grow, the more you will be influenced by the adults. I felt that I should study hard...then major in journalism, economics, or finance in the future...or take the National Servant Examination, and become a teacher, which is relatively stable.
However, I have never let go of painting and designing. I designed posters, logos, business cards and so on when I was in middle school.
In 2011, I went to Fudan University to study translation.
In my spare time, I translated and designed captions.
I joined STU (Student Website Association). It's the first time I encountered Interaction Design.
Designed posters, painted bikes, and curated exhibitions in my club, Abstract Art Association.
Time flies, I was considering my career path. At that time, I was t so sure that I didn't want to be an interpreter. I was still very interested in industries related to visual art and creativity. I worked as a Strategy Intern in Advertising Industry, then a Curator Assistant...but I didn't think they were what I want.
At that time, a series of things happened very coincidentally: First, I saw the JD of Interaction Designer at Douban.com which emphasized design capacity, empathy for users, and logic, which was in line with what I wanted to do. I realized I actually enjoyed working at STU.
I did have some design experience, but can I become a professional designer? I doubted.
I did have some design experience, but can I become a professional designer? I doubted.
She did two things. First, she was preparing her master's program application and asked me to review her undergraduate portfolio. Then I thought, "Why don’t I make a collection of my own? I also have some works."
So I learned InDesign within 3 days and made my first portfolio. I was very encouraged.
The second thing she did was to recommend me to watch Carnegie Mellon's promotional film "Fall in Love with Design". After watching it, I fell in love with Carnegie Mellon. CMU encourages people with interdisciplinary backgrounds to study design, so I deferred one year to prepare application.
Thanks to my friend, I went to Tongji University to audit for a year and learned interaction design more systematically.
Later, I officially became a student of the School of Design at CMU.
I worked in two startups before. The first one was a wedding service startup in Silicon Valley: LadyMarry brought a Chinese one-stop wedding service to North America and developed a DIY wedding app. I was the only product designer, so I just figure out all the design-related work by myself.
[Case Study@LM]
[Work Collection@LM]
The second one, because I like listening to podcasts, I went to Castbox, an overseas podcasting platform, as a product designer, and conducted user research as well.
[Work Collection@Castbox]
Then I interned at Wal-Mart Labs. I independently did a birthday party celebration project. From planning and research to the final demo, I provided prospects for the future development of Wal-Mart’s e-commerce and Order Ahead team.
[Case Study@Walmart Labs] 
Now, I returned to China working at Tencent OED to contribute to the education industry of my motherland.
[Case Study - 2C@Tencent]
[Case Study - 2B@Tencent]
The whole story of my career change can be summed up in a very simple sentence, which is called "Never give up your faith and you will achieve something in the future."
Share a sentence that affects me a lot, called"Everybody designs life for him/herself".
This is what my teacher told me when I was studying calligraphy when I was 15 years old. I felt awkward standing among those five-year-old kids and asked my teacher "Am I too old to study calligraphy?". You know, age is a sensitive topic in Asia. But my teacher said, “It’s okay. People can design their own lives and decide when and what to do, regardless of how others generally arrange things.”
There is a very strong initiative within DESIGN. At Carnegie Mellon, professors advocate design as an independent discipline, distinguishing it from liberal arts, sciences, and engineering. Liberal arts describe the world, science explains the world, and engineering transforms the world, but the design means what this world can and should be, and how it can be better.
Design is actually a kind of thinking that can run through all disciplines and everyone's life.
The whole story is in the form of story boards, because my biggest hobby is drawing illustrations.
This painting style, I call it At a Loss. Because this little person looks very innocent and confused. This work is called “Give yourself a smile and flowers will bloom”.
"The most creative moment of the day". I usually apply this style in the story board in my design, because I find that everyone who sees these pictures will smile, which is very convenient to open the topic.
Painting has always been my hobby, and it can be divided into 4 stages.
From 2009 to 2013, I drew things pretty casually, fox example, some small pictures on the envelopes.
Since 2013, I started using a digital tablet and started my second phase. Due to the improvement of production materials, I fully explored the medium and style of painting.
This is my work No.1.
Inspired by Nancy Zhang, I started my own Art, Style, Life series.
I learned watecolor painting with Vina, as famous Chinese watercolor illustrator.
At that time, I did some side projects such as drawing a menu for a coffee shop and drawing a cover for a poetry club. It's easy to see that I was imitating other people's styles.
This is the cover and back cover of my first and only edition of illustration portfolio.
In 2016, after officially switching to interactive design, I entered the third stage of my illustration career. I illustrated for design.
I have a strong interest in UI Illustration. So I drew flat style illustrations.
Either part of the UI, or to explain how the product works.
For example, how flowers work in a wedding.
In 2018, the fourth stage began. I became fascinated by the illustrations of You Zhou, studied the history of illustration, and became more familiar with contemporary niche illustrators.
I no longer value the commerciality and functionality of illustration, but instead, want to develop in a purely artistic and niche field. So I started to learn realistic illustrations to consolidate my drawing skills.
Some color exercise.
I drew my favorite singer Chenyu Hua, which is twitted by Chenyu Hua's Global Fans Association. (Ah, my moment!)
I called this series "Take Your Magnifier" ;)
I like drawing little figures with no detailed expression. I like the contrast between small persona and big space. For example, the little man in the red raincoat seems to be a little lonely, but in fact, he is also interacting with this white space.
Finally, I recommend 2 of my favorite podcasts: UX Coffee and 得意忘形. UX Coffee was founded by Chinese UX designers in Silicon Valley, they discuss product design-related matters. While 得意忘形 is a media project that pursues individual freedom and the search for truth. It covers a wide range of topics, such as history, linguistics, working methods, brain structure, fashion, philosophy, psychology, and etc. It is a tool to help you understand yourself and the world.
This is Minrui, a designer grows wild. Feel free to connect with me!
