I didn't start out in design.
I studied finance, interned in journalism and advertising, then went into marketing, always circling the same question: how do you actually move people?
It took until my late twenties to name what I'd been chasing. I'm a maker at heart, I'd just been looking for the right medium.
That medium turned out to be software. Like Bob Baxley says, it isn't only a tool, it's a creative medium, and the people who make it carry real responsibility for how it lands.
It started early, though. In 6th grade my dad handed me a silver gadget iPod Shuffle with Faye Wong playing, and that tiny, impossibly sleek thing just stopped me.
I've been chasing that feeling ever since: not frictionless, just present.
The rest of my education happens in books. I read modern Chinese history, gender history, and Eileen Chang: private historians and writers recovering the unseen lives and unheard voices the official record left out. That's where I learned to zoom out: nothing exists in a vacuum.
It's also how I read products now: every screen has a history, and every user carries context the spec doesn't mention. Good design starts with careful reading.
I think in systems, but I design for people, and I want whatever I build to feel as human as it is useful.
