Designing Joy
The beginning of my transition into UX
I went to an AIGA (American Institute of Graphic Arts) mixer at a bar a while back to do as all good professionals do and go forth and talk to people. After a few conversations into the night, I was floating around by my lonesome and opted to join a large group of folks that looked like they were having a good time.
I inserted myself onto the table, and within 30 seconds into introductions, I learned they were actually at the bar to celebrate their coworker’s promotion. They were urban planners and engineers that worked for the City of Los Angeles and had no idea what event was going on with AIGA. In that moment, I wanted to quietly and peacefully fade into non-existence.
They ended up being warm and welcoming, and heavily invested in learning about what I did for a living (50% of me thinks they were genuine, 50% thinks they were helping me recover from my folly.) I explained to them the whole print production process in filmed entertainment — from sketching comps to compositing images, to finishing and color-correcting, to creating mechanical files to the printers, to seeing the final art across the city on billboards, on public transportation, and in movie theaters. They gawked at the glamorous account that was my life, but I quickly explained to them that I wanted to depart from the entertainment industry. I felt that the work I was doing was not substantive, and the designs that I worked with had very little impact on others.
To my alarm, they audibly gasped. They believed I was blind to the importance of what I was doing. They countered that it was the joy from entertainment that they needed to extrapolate to make urban planning in the city successful. In order to transform the city, they needed to transform people’s hearts and emotions through their experience of space. Joy was the key. This concept was a beacon of light for me, and I ultimately changed my trajectory in terms of how I wanted to wield design.
Now, I choose user experience. Though it is invisibly omnipresent, it manifests itself in the joy, the relief, the excitement, the ease, the effortlessness that the user feels when interacting with a product or service. If the user experience is awful, it’s abhorred. If it’s phenomenal, it’s celebrated. But most of the time, it goes unnoticed. It’s the humble member of the design family, and yet so integral to the functioning of everything around us.
Since that chance meeting that night, I’ve promised myself to be hungry and to absorb as much knowledge as I can. More than ever, I am eager to contribute to design solutions that will shape our future. For all the endeavors ahead, I will bring my “A” game, my grit, and, lest we forget, the power of joy and delight that my design experience has taught me.
