Growth Stories – Olivia Wang

Olivia is a UX/UI designer based in Sydney, Australia. She has just signed on at Upflowy to be our Junior Product Designer. She enjoys turning complex problems into simple, intuitive, and beautiful designs. When she’s not designing, you’ll find her singing, reading, or taking pictures of beautiful scenery.

Hobby/Fun Fact about yourself:

I’m very into manga. My favourites are ‘Hikaru No Go’, ‘Your Name’ and ‘Demon Slayer’. I’m keen on singing. I like to make things interesting, and I’m a big fan of Counter-Strike and a mean table tennis player.

Personal Growth Story:

I started my career as a telecommunications engineer with China Telecom. In that role, a proud accomplishment for me was, I developed a network planning and optimization software user interface in C++.

During my work, I found that I like communicating with people, finding reasons behind their behaviour, and solving their problems. So, I came back to University to learn more about user experience. The topic of my doctoral thesis is ‘Mobile cloud computing user experience quality assessment and optimization’.

Then I worked as a senior telecommunications engineer with PetroChina. In that role, I managed many systems and software development projects from end to end, which helped me build a deep understanding of the agile process.  

To enrich my life experience, I migrated to Sydney in 2018, then I worked as a project manager with the 3rd Solution Investment company and launched the company’s online sales website which led to an increase in product sales by 60%. 

Through these experiences, I found that UX/UI design is something I really want to do, something I expected. The story, the message, the feeling, the connection, how do I make this reach to people? All of these things fascinate me. So, I studied UX/UI design at the General Assembly and completed five UX/UI projects there. 

Now I am a junior product designer at Upflowy where I can use my creativity to design products for customers, learn and grow with my colleagues. This new role and the opportunities for growth make me feel happy and fulfilled.

Your Next Growth Target: 

Hone my design skills via building products and solving problems.

Your Role Model:

Steve Jobs has always been an inspiration to me because he founded a great company and built a series of amazing products. From Apple products, I learned the meaning of less is more, human-centered design, and intuitive design.

What would you say to yourself 5 or 10 years ago?:

Keep learning and meeting great people.

The book you plan to read or are currently reading:

I am currently reading Designing With The Mind in Mind by Jeff Johnson. This book provides designers with just enough background in perceptual and cognitive psychology that UI design guides make intuitive sense rather than being just a list of rules to follow.

1-3 books, podcasts, or pieces of content that you’d recommend to anyone:

Don’t Make Me Think by Steve Krug. It’s a great book about usability testing.

Lean UX_ Applying Lean Principles to Improve User Experience by Jeff Gothelf and Josh Seiden. In this insightful book, leading advocate Jeff Gothelf teaches you valuable Lean UX principles, tactics, and techniques from the ground up.

24 Minutes of UX is a podcast of the people, by the people, for the people. There are some interesting UX topics you might be interested in.

You can read more growth stories here, and find out more about Upflowy here.