Today we’d like to introduce you to Henry Han.
Hi Henry, thanks for sharing your story with us. To start, maybe you can tell our readers some of your backstory.
The emergence of user experience design still fascinates me. In a nutshell, user experience involves designing products, especially digital ones such as phone apps or desktop apps, based on user needs. I’m a user experience designer today. Daily, I utilize psychology, art, and business, to meet the goal of making users’ voices heard to improve business performance. I’ve always had a passion for art, but I never thought I could have art involved as a part of my career. My journey with art first began when I started drawing at the age of five. I was a kid who would go crazy with pencils and inks on the paper. Back in my high school days, I would come home exhausted from school, go to the nearby gas station, get a Coke bottle and a bag of chips, come home, and start drawing. Eventually, this habit turned into long hours of creating graphics on the computer. Those graphics ranged from photo manipulation to vector graphics of human faces to logos. I found creating graphics on the computer to have another layer of excitement that I didn’t get from drawing or painting.
I spent so much time on this art that my family and friends got concerned. In all honesty, so did I. It was always my belief that it would tough to make a living out of pursuing art. When I entered college, I told myself to pursue a promising career. I chose business as my major and added a web design minor. My college years turned out to be confusing, as I didn’t realize what my exact path was. It wasn’t until many years into my career that I realized how to integrate my art background with my business expertise. As my journey with user experience deepened, I’ve gained more understanding of exactly how to create successful digital products that cater to user needs for businesses of a variety of industries. Through many processes of testing out user interface patterns with actual customers, I’ve realized users of a specific industry, let’s say online shopping, are familiar with established interface patterns of that industry. It’s crucial to make those experiences as seamless as possible so that those users get what they need with the product and hopefully enjoy the product enough to keep coming back.
We all face challenges, but looking back, would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?
My college years were confusing, as I didn’t realize what my exact path was. My major was with the business school, and my minor was with the college of fine arts. Daily, I would myself go back and forth between the business school and the college of fine arts, and I would find the students at both schools not understanding each other’s perspectives. To me, the two schools represented two extremes. The business students mostly talked about money and profits during class discussions. If you insert anything art-related, they might not take you seriously. The art students, especially the painters, always seemed to be free-spirited, in lifestyle and in the way of thinking. Their main concerns were not with earning a good living. As for me, I wanted to pursue a promising career that would give me a comfortable living.
On the other hand, I didn’t want to pursue something that I have no passion for. So I always struggled with balancing art with business. I figured I had to do an internship in the summer of my sophomore year, and I didn’t know what kind of internship to pursue. To put it bluntly, what kind of internships I pursue during college might very well determine what kind of jobs I will land after college. Thankfully, everything changed after I talked to Scout Stevenson, a professor from my web design class. He is a professor at the college of fine arts but also an experience creative director at a software company called Extension Engine. He offered me to be a web design intern at his company, which I gladly accepted. This guy was way ahead of his time. His advice for me was to always walk into the shoes of the user. This was in 2012. If you ask anyone back then what is user experience, or UX, you can hardly get an answer. He also said web design is like the business school of fine arts, which I didn’t quite get what he meant at that time. By the time I understood those words, I was many years into my career.
Alright, so let’s switch gears a bit and talk business. What should we know about your work?
As a user experience designer, I’ve now created digital products for various companies, ranging from large ones such as Citibank, Samsung, and Vrbo to smaller startups. I’m currently at an aerospace company called SkyGrid, which was founded by Boeing, and Austin-based AI company SparkCognition. The company aims to use AI to power aerial transportation of the future and enable aerial traffics of all kinds, such as drones, aerial taxis, and commercial airplanes, to manage aerial traffic automatically. This is done by giving aerial vehicles complete awareness of their environment, nearby traffic, and FAA regulations. The vehicles would then be taught to make decisions based on the information present. Since the goal is to eliminate a lot of human labor during the flight process, I need to think through what information needs to be presented to the user and what is solved quietly by the AI. My end goal is to enable the end-user to create and manage their flights with ease. There are definitely interesting problems to solve, and I’m enjoying this part of my journey.
Risk-taking is a topic that people have widely differing views on – we’d love to hear your thoughts.
The biggest lesson I’ve learned on risk-taking is trusting your instincts. You might hear a lot of opinions on yourself and your choices, but only you know what you truly want. Back in the days, when I told people that I wanted to pursue graphics for my career, I got a lot of doubts. So I’d say the most significant risk I’ve taken is continuing to pursue what I truly enjoyed doing, which is creating graphics.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.henryhan.net
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/_henryhan/
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