May 23, 2023

My last interview was with Yuan Yao Su, a product designer and manager at SysJust. She majored in communications and currently works in UIUX (User Interface and User Experience) design.

Su shared with me about the general state of Taiwan’s UIUX industry, which is mostly populated with small to mid-sized companies and teams that are generally under 50 people. With the nature of UIUX research, it requires a lot of time, making it a larger responsibility for these smaller teams. When Su started working at her company, she was the sole member of the team and the handoff was minimal. This meant that communication was crucial, especially as a new addition to the workplace. She emphasized to me that it’s important as a designer to have good communication skills in order to present your ideas effectively to co-workers and slowly allow them to get accustomed to the process. Even though her major in communications didn’t seem totally related to UIUX, she found it was very useful in her path to become a UIUX designer and researcher.

Back when Su graduated, UIUX wasn’t really a term or field yet, so she started out in graphic and layout design. She also participated in business planning. Taiwan’s design environment was influenced by the size of companies, so often designers were viewed as just there to beautify things and produce a product that employers wanted. A clear design process and design thinking weren’t really present with that system. This made designers lack a voice in the project, limiting their opinions. Because of these reasons, Su felt that this wasn’t really what she wanted to do with her work.

This led to her taking a working holiday in London, UK, where she spent 2 years. While there, she met a programmer from Hong Kong. This programmer was familiar with R&D (research and development), which included UIUX as well. They recommended Su to maybe try angling towards UIUX design, so while she was still in London, she began to self-teach herself. UIUX design allowed her to think as a designer, instead of just blindly following the manager/boss’s opinions. Su felt this was what she truly wanted at that point, so UIUX wasn’t necessarily something she wanted to do from the start but was something she saw as a potential career as she gained more experience.

I asked Su if UIUX differed a lot between Taiwan and other countries and she told me that it definitely does. Even just changing to another company, another boss, another role could totally change the experience. Su explained to me that UIUX is such a broad field, incorporating so many various disciplines and ideas, which makes it incredibly diverse. There are so many facets to UIUX, requiring people to be UIUX designers, writers, etc. Simply a change in environment can vastly change someone’s experience and the content they deal with within their role.

In the UIUX process, there are various sections related to research, technology, and design. I was curious what parts were Su’s favorite throughout the process. She told me that interviewing users and having the flexibility to create, analyze, and have a logical process in her designs are her favorite aspects as a UIUX designer.

At her company, Su described her workplace as more collaborative, with a few designers participating on the same project. One project can have many parts, but it needs to still work together as a whole and be cohesive, so Su told me how important it is to collaborate with the other designers. Each company is different however since some teams have more designers who take on many projects, so each designer supervises their own project. Su heard from a fellow designer that they work independently to the point that a UI library isn’t necessary. This is because only they themselves would need to really understand each part of the design. But it’s different at Su’s company: they design in a way that others can still understand in order to allow the project to work well. She said a hands-off approach is more applicable to the way the design team might interact with the engineering team since that process needs to be approached differently depending on whether the product is for Android, iOS, or web.

Because of Wellesley’s Media Arts & Sciences major being more interdisciplinary, I wanted to ask Su whether she felt this type of interdisciplinary approach was beneficial for a career in UIUX. She told me that it definitely does help, primarily because UIUX’s biggest challenge is actually the need to change your thinking all the time. As a designer, we want to solve problems, but each problem is multifaceted. She gave me an example that if 3 people described a problem to you, they would each describe it differently. The designer would need to change their mode of thinking in order to discover the base problem that is truly the central point. Su explained that she thinks it would particularly help to be able to understand more since it would improve communications with other team members or software developers.

Su shared some advice with me, suggesting that again, she felt that communication was a really major part as a UIUX designer. Having good communication skills can allow you to continue developing in your career and can transfer well anywhere and at any time. A narrow mindset and lack of willingness to listen to others can limit a designer a lot. Tools that are used now might not be continued in the future, so Su recommended to me to foster good communication with others. It helps in both short and long term, since each person will interact with lots of other people and you can better understand what others might really mean or want. Additionally, because of how diverse roles can be in UIUX, Su suggested that I can interview people, read blogs, and try out different aspects of the process to find the best fitting role for me. From there, she said I can explore which industry and company is suitable for me. 

In terms of her experiences abroad, Su has worked abroad before. Her reasons were to advance her experiences at that time and to try this field. When she described how Taiwan and other countries differ, she characterized Taiwanese design as emphasizing the practical. A junior she met in the UK had been in industrial design in Taiwan, and once she saw designs in the UK, she expressed how she was surprised at how impractical and unrealistic the designs were. However, Su acknowledged that each person’s view might be affected by their school as well since certain schools teach students to create a project that is industry standard and business appropriate. The goal might differ, one centering on the artistry while the other focusing on its usefulness. Overall though, Su said she would still describe western design to be more free while Taiwan’s design teaching varies depending on the teacher. In general, Su explained to me that it makes more sense to evaluate the learning background and the situation to fully comprehend what each place is capable of.

Returning back to what Su talked about earlier, she said communication is likely one of the biggest challenges she faces in her work. While solutions can be fixed, people’s relationships are not based on logic alone. In the earlier stages, people’s different levels of experience and language might create a challenge. However, with more experience doing tasks and learning more, this can be resolved. Any new person added will require figuring out how to communicate well again, and it can cause a lot of misunderstandings. Su did admit that as she started her position as the only design team member, it made it hard since the previous system was extremely different from how she would do the design process. Slowly changing the process of how things were executed was one challenge she had to face. Since the team is still growing as well, Su has been trying to bring in at least one new team member each year. It’s a process when she has to set out a new role description and how they can contribute to the group, but she told me that it’s something she is proud of too.

For what she hopes to do more of in the future, Su said she’d still want to do more research, particularly since her work now mostly focuses on trade within finance. Most users aren’t necessarily willing to say exactly how they trade as these are secrets to their success. However, Su feels that having more research will allow them to understand better why certain things might work better or worse a certain way. Currently, product managers who work with her team will sometimes just tell them to fix something without fully explaining the ‘why’ behind it and how the user responded. Su hopes to be able to more thoroughly investigate the user’s interactions with a product, but she said the path to do more research requires small steps first to slowly introduce it to her superiors. She described user research as both difficult and interesting, and it can slowly allow them to design something more well-rounded.

I hope you enjoyed my interviews as I explored and learned more about topics such as living abroad, working/teaching in the technology industry, and important life skills to learn. I gained a lot from my interviews, talking to various people from differing backgrounds who could share their experiences and wisdom with me. It was also a learning experience in itself to interview someone using Chinese and gave me more confidence in my language skills. Thank you for following my interviews and journey here in Taiwan!