Hi again
Happy you're here!
I stumbled across product design at last year's Rice Design-a-thon. Collaborating under pressure to turn ideas into tangible solutions, everything finally clicked into place.
As a cognitive science major, I'm fascinated by how people think and behave. As an artist, I'm eager to translate these human insights into thoughtful design solutions.
It's quite hard to encapsulate who a person is in a single page, but here's my best attempt:
I ♥︎ creating art.
Dance documentation:
Would I call myself a dancer? Before coming to college, not really. I certainly danced, but the few years of traditional Chinese dance and ballet never fully captured my interest.
Meeting the Rice dance community completely changed that. Creating, learning, practicing, and performing dances alongside such passionate people has been pure joy. With the constant encouragement and positivity I've experienced, it's no surprise that many of my dearest friends have come from this community.
It's truly special that something I once felt indifferent toward has become one of my greatest passions. Through dance, I've gained leadership skills through director roles, developed an eye for movement and flow, and found a loving community I now consider my second family :)
Side note: The more experience I gain in both dance and design, the more I realize how strikingly similar they are in principle.
I ♥︎ creating art.
Art documentation:
My relationship with visual art is a little more complicated.
My whole life, I've been labeled as the "art kid". Every single birthday card I've ever gifted is hand-drawn. The walls of both my childhood home and apartment are covered in my paintings. I even sold watercolor bookmarks in middle school and made profits in the double digits (huge money moves back then). Visual art has always been my safe space: bounded by constraints, yet full of endless possibilities.
However, as a student immersed in STEM, it started to feel like there was no room for artistic creativity anymore.
This dilemma is why discovering product design felt so miraculous. Sitting at the very intersection of art and STEM I had been seeking my whole life, I only wished I knew about it sooner.
My background in visual art now shapes the way I approach design, particularly in color, composition/layout, and typography. What once felt like a hobby I had to leave behind has become the very foundation of the work I do today.
Side note: I wrote my college essay on this very issue; the theme was forks.
I ♥︎ ...
life's small joys
