<aside> 📔 Robyn Lee is a senior studying Business Administration and double majoring in Human-Computer Interaction. She worked at eBay this summer as an UI/UX Design Intern on their Design incubation team. Outside of UI/UX design, she enjoys dancing and is a part of two dance groups on campus.

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🪆 When and how did you become interested in UX?

In high school, I thought that I would be going down a marketing or business route, which was why I entered CMU as a business major. As I continued on, I started realizing that I wanted to do something more creative, and to use creativity for problem solving–that’s why I started getting more into UI/UX design. I found that this industry was really interesting, so I learned a lot of what I knew about design at the time on my own. That’s also when I learned about the HCI major, and how there were a lot of courses that would teach you a lot more about user research, prototyping, and interaction design. I ended up applying for the double major in my sophomore year and got in.


🪆 What kind of background did you have before that? Had you used design software previously? Done CS-related work? etc

I was very self-taught. During quarantine, I played around with a lot of different design tools, and watching Youtube tutorials. I started off by myself using Adobe Creative Cloud and Figma, and I didn’t really apply what I learned in Figma until I really started taking HCI classes, where I was able to get more practice on them. A lot of the HCI classes, especially in groups, we made a lot of prototypes and I was able to get more practice on that tool through class. This past summer at eBay, we used Figma as our main prototyping tool, so I was able to go into the internship already knowing how to use the tool.


🪆 What was a course that you’ve taken for HCI that you felt really impacted your work/outlook and why?

Even before I got into the major, I would try to get into some HCI courses. I took Interaction Design Studio 1, and that really kick-started my career in UX. I learned a lot of basic foundations of design, and I realized that throughout that class that UX was what I wanted to do. That’s why I ended up applying for the double major.


🪆 How do you think, in retrospect, the HCI major has helped you in your career path, network, portfolio, etc?

It really helped with my portfolio. I had a lot of group projects in the classes that I was taking and was able to use those in my portfolio. I would say a lot of the core foundation classes, like User-Centered Research and Evaluation (05-410) and Interaction Design Studios 1 and 2 (05-651 and 05-650) prepared me as well for applying for internships by building my general design skillset.


🪆 How was applying for UX-related jobs like?

A lot of job descriptions list out things that they would like to see, like advanced prototyping skills, design fundamentals, or good communication design skills. I got a little intimidated by that when I was first applying, but what I realized was that it’s better to first apply to everything, even if you don’t think that you meet each of those bullet points. I think that in a competitive job market it’s already really hard to get an interview or offer in the first place, so it’s better to just not limit yourself. As long as you’re interested in that position, it’s better to just apply.


🪆 What were some challenges you faced going into HCI? Any lessons learned?

A challenge I experienced more internally was that I knew UX design is such a growing field. It’s becoming more and more competitive and I knew everyone was trying to do it. I worried a lot about how I could make myself stand out and how I could be just as good as everyone else around me. I think that in the beginning stages, it was more about trying to understand the field more and breaking into the field. I felt that it’s better to focus on myself and the skills I want to learn and how I want to grow first. When I start to apply to jobs, I can start to think more about what differentiates me and how I can make my portfolio presentations a lot more interesting to employers. Don’t let other people’s experiences affect me and stop comparing myself to other people. That was the biggest challenge I faced and lesson I learned eventually.