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Journal

台美文化差異之家長視角

2022年底最大的里程碑就是帶家裡兩隻幼兒回一趟台灣,看看自己的家鄉。我長住國外已經超過10年,上次回台灣已經是三年前的事了,加上自己從來沒有在台灣養過小孩,很多生活上的細節也是第一次經歷,以下記錄一些reverse culture shock: 1. 台灣地狹人稠,尤其台北市寸土寸金,空間不夠的狀態下,人民常常會”借用”公共空間。讓我很有感的是人行道:我們用的是並排的雙人推車,很多時候人行道本身…

What I learned from successfully launching my side project on Product Hunt as an indie maker

On March 18, 2019, I launched my side project on Product Hunt for the first time. It reached #7 on March 19 and stayed on the home page for the whole day. To add more context, Product Hunt is the #1 worldwide community for makers, entrepreneurs, journalists, and tech enthusiasts to discover new products. There are typically close to 100 products being launched each day. My competitors on the same day include products from Google, Typeform and many other legit companies. This result made me feel both proud and humble. Besides, the support from the users and the community warmed […]

10 frameworks to help you measure success in design

Design thinking is a never-ending process. In theory, every tiny component in a product has room for improvement. We can run testings, again and again, to keep optimizing it. The work will never be “finished”. However, in reality, even the largest tech company has limited resources (time and money) on each project. It’s critical to be intentional about where to put the resources? When to shift gear from one effort to another? Most importantly, what’s the definition of “success” for a product/feature? To answer these questions, setting metrics is the key. Metrics in simple terms is the quantifiable goals for your project. It can be measured by both the quantitative data in logs […]

How to choose a UX Master’s Program (part 2)

This is the second part of “How to choose a UX Master’s Program” in which I shared my journey and considerations of starting out a UX career. Since the first article was published, many people reached out to me for more specific advice. I thought I can do a better job organizing my responses and make them available to folks who might have similar questions: For a list of UX programs, please check out the site I made: www.topuxschool.com. You can sort the schools/programs by length, location, tuition fee, requirements, etc. Q: I don’t have any design background/experience. Do you […]

How to choose a UX Master’s Program

It’s not a secret that UX is a booming field. Many people want to break into the this area and the first questions they ask tend to be: “Should I get a degree?”, “Which program?” I asked myself these questions after graduating with a Bachelor’s Degree in Business (Taiwan, 2010) and ended up collecting two Master’s Degrees in UX Design along the way — Master of Design for Interaction (DFI) at TU Delft (Netherlands, 2011–2013) and Master of Human-Computer Interaction and Design (MHCID) at University of Washington (USA, 2015–2016). This article intends to explain my rationale behind my school selection as well […]

How to teach yourself UX design

First of all, I have to confess that my UX design skill was not completely “self-taught.” I have in total 3 years of higher education in design. Simply put, this is not a “how-to-land-a-decent-job-without-a-degree” story. I did learn a lot in school in terms of research, critique and collaboration. Nevertheless, I found that all successful people I knew in the industry are incredible self-learners. On top of that, I realized a lot of design skills and knowledge can be learned, or even have to be learned, outside of the classroom. I started to self-educate for design while studying an unrelated […]

The art of giving feedback

I remembered one of my teammates at school presented her video work to our team. I thought there was large room for improvement, so I pointed out what I didn’t like about the video, using another teammate’s work as an example. After finishing my comments, I immediately felt the tension in the air. My teammate replied: “If you don’t like my work, I’m fine with passing this task to someone else.” Ouch! That’s the moment when I realized that I sucked at giving feedback. My design career had been mainly focused on developing my technical skills, and very little on […]

What participants really think about user testing

User testing is an integral part in an iterative design process. Blind spots can be seen early on and users’ insights can be gained to keep improving the design. While the whole design team benefits from the engagement of the participants, the participants seem benefit very little from the session. Why do they still invest time and effort with so little in return? There must be something in their mind before the testing that prompt their decision, which I called the “pre-testing motivation”: 1. They want to maintain their relationship with you They are your friends, coworkers, neighbors and family. […]

The UX dark patterns

Have you ever been given a design brief with a single end goal to raise the conversion rate? As UX/UI designers, we were trained to think from end-users’ perspectives. We’re no stranger to the process of selecting target users, observing them, talking with them and even creating with them in order to elicit insights that can potentially improve the products or services. In other words, we design with users’ needs and wishes in mind. Our success is plausibly equivalent to users’ satisfaction. However, in the real world, products and services usually belong to companies, and companies usually exist for profit […]

Why should we care about UX research?

UX research ≠ good UX research. Coming from a design background and working in the industry for a couple of years, I’ve seen many occasions where UX research failed to serve its purpose. It’s not uncommon that after a significant amount of time and effort were put into conducting interviews/focus groups/usability testing, the findings turned out to be unsurprising or not in line with what actually happens in the real world. This is the moment when people, including myself, start questioning about the value of UX research in terms of cost-efficiency and the impact on the final products. Not until […]

Netherlands, thank you and goodbye

I’ve been thinking for awhile about writing an article to explain why I decided to leave the Netherlands, but something kept holding me back. On the one hand, my feelings toward the Netherlands are complex. It’s not an absolute like or dislike. On the other hand, it feels like a relationship without a happy ending — a bit shameful to just spit it out. Not until last week, when I was invited to speak about my 4 years of study and work in the Netherlands as an alumni at an event organized by TU Delft in Taipei, did I realize that there […]

荷蘭,謝謝,珍重再見

想要寫一篇文章來解釋為什麼我想離開荷蘭很久了,但一直下不了筆。一方面是因為我對荷蘭的情感相當複雜,不是絕對的喜歡或討厭。二方面是某種層面來說,它就像是面對一段沒有結果的感情,有點令人難以啟齒。 直到上週,我受邀在TU Delft在台灣的留學講座上,以學姐的身份分享在荷蘭留學工作將近四年的心路歷程。看到台下爆滿的聽眾,才讓我意識到,有許多人對荷蘭相當的好奇及感興趣,他們就像當初出國前的我一樣,對歐洲…

荷蘭留學工作FAQ

前言 有鑑於很多人來信詢問來荷蘭念書和工作相關的問題,一個個回覆之後發現很多問題都大同小異,因此索性整理成這篇Q&A。本篇的回答是依據我在荷蘭念書和工作將近四年的經驗(2011-2015),以及身邊看過的例子,目的是希望提供一個過來人的觀點,給需要的人參考!(針對特定學校、學費、課程…這類問題,建議直接些信去問學校會比較準,因為我只念過一個學校的一個科系,且已經在2015年離…

兩個世界

曾幾何時,訂機票到台灣,感覺像是去度假。 曾幾何時,被中文環繞的感覺是奇特的,是受寵若驚的。 曾幾何時,推開家門的那一剎那,是淚水無法承載的回憶。 我回家了,距離上次回來已有兩年半,我的生活也正式被分割為兩個特色分明的世界。 在荷蘭的世界,我習慣了扮演社會中的少數份子,也放棄了掩飾自己的獨特。對於萍水相逢和人來人往已不再大驚小怪。孤獨讓我窒息,也讓我更用力呼吸,我開始了拖延已久的個人專案:學吉他、…