Everytime when I see Min in school, I screamed her name, MIN!! She is one of the friendliest and shyest classmates. But don’t let that fool you. Min has an amazing UI background and anything she designs turns into absolutely stunning pieces. Her thesis is about “Life documentation — How to create and manage personal archives.” And while we are in the final months of grad school I wanted to catch up with Min and ask her about her future in interaction design.
Thesis preview: Life documentation
Elushika: How do you feel about your thesis?
Min: It’s fun, my topic started from my personal interest and curiosity. But since I did not start with a clear problem, it was difficult to define what I was trying to solve. There was this question – Why do I need your product? – to answer it, I needed to constantly research, frame the problem differently, and try to remain confident in myself. As a final form, I don’t want to an another app, but it is really difficult.
Elushika: We are about to finish grad school, are you nervous? I remember you mentioning that you will really miss school.
Min: I am happy to graduate because I can sleep as long as I like! 🙂 but I am going to miss this time. When I was working at a company, I was delighted that my design made it into the world, but at the same time, I missed the school environment where I could work freely regardless of budget or time. In that sense, I think I have really enjoyed this school life even though there are lots of assignments and lack of sleep. Above all, I wonder if I can meet these awesome people who have similar thoughts, pursue the same values, and encourage each other in the future.
Elushika: Your designs are absolutely beautiful! What is your secret? Do you have any designs rules that you always follow?
Min: Thanks for telling me that. Even though I was a visual design major, when I first started working as a designer in the company, my work was really messed up. So I think I asked other designers a lot even about specific details such as pixels, margins and so on. And their know-how really helped me a lot. The design rules I follow is keeping to the basics. Talking about the details may be over the hill in this face-paced environment. But I personally do care about details. So when I see something beautiful, I try to find the pattern they used such as size, spacing, color, information grouping, etc.
Elushika: Say if you had an extra 2 months to work on your thesis what would you do?
Min: I personally have a lot of interest in this topic, so I bought a domain to continue works related this topic. I want to build a whole website and document all I did before from my past Kickstarter project to every thesis prototype. Actually, I will do it after graduation.
Elushika: Right after graduation, what your plans?
Min: Meet my parents, friends, visit Korea, shopping, travel, and more! There are so many things I want to do! Of course, I want to sleep a lot! 🙂
