Do things that really matter. Solve real problems, provide real value! — Peter Dennis Pan
R: Can you introduce shortly yourself?
Peter: Hello, my name is Peter Dennis Pan and I am a product manager & designer who started freelancing and designing ever since I was 12 years old. And when I was 15, I got mixed up within the startup bunch where, I have been helping teams make cool products ever since.
Currently, I am the lead designer for a startup called 1Scope while consulting for a few other ventures on the side. I am also finishing up my last year of high school, so yes — fun exciting stuff :)
R: Do you do some ritual every day outside of work?
Peter: Outside of work… That’s a hard one haha. Yeah, at the end of every day, I just listen to music and reflect upon my day. I rewind the whole day through my head and just think about what happened, what mistakes I made, how I can change and also about my smaller wins throughout the day. Personally, I find reflecting being key to learning from your experiences.
But yes, I also wake up every day before 5:30am.
I guess you can call that a ritual.
R: How did you learn design?
Peter: I learned design through an wild adventure starting from when I was 12. It all began with a school group project for a film project.
Naturally, as kind of a creative kid, I wanted to create the best film in the world. So what did I do?
I went online to learn about how I could make an awesome title sequence animations. Yes. Instead of actually shooting the film itself.
From then, I discovered adobe after effects which took me an entire week to get a hang of. It turned out to be a terrible film. However, it did have the flashiest title sequence ;)
But from my short exposure to design online, I shortly discovered a youtube design team called ‘Ark Fx’. It was an online design team that created motion graphics. I watched all their videos and was hooked from day one.
And down into the rabbit hole, I went. And over the next few weeks, I had become utterly and completely obsessed with motion graphics. I created my own youtube channel and off I went, designing my own motion creations.
I spun my wheels for a while until I joined the online youtube design community where it was filled with other teens from all over the world all doing one thing. And that was design. Logo design, branding, web design, motion graphics, illustrations.
This was where I was first introduced to the concept of web and user interface design. And thus a new passion was found and I was soon obsessed again, but to a whole new level. My life at that point in time was solely all about design.
It was all photoshop, behance, dribbble and more reading.
I woke at 4am, worked til 8am, went to school. Got home 4pm, worked til 9pm. Rinse and repeat.
I read everything from articles, books to magazines about design. I even had begun to dress like a damn hipster. My hours were either consumed by time spent designing or interacting with others in the community.
Countless hours spent in Skype calls hours. Thousands of messages.
These early years really allowed myself to fully enjoy design, earn my first business stripes through ecommerce, growth marketing and just hustling for the fun of it.
Can you tell us a small story from an error that you made you understood something really important for your life?
Peter: It wasn’t all sunshine. By the time I was 15/16 years old, I had grown a very high self-expectation on myself. I had ideas of what I should be and how others should see me as. I wanted to win. And with time, I had lost my sense of self worth to how ‘productive’ I was. There was no slowing down.
And through overworking myself to 45 hours per week on top of full-time highschool, I had gotten an RSI (repetitive stress injury) on my right index finger where I was unable to use the mouse a couple of months.
It was with this forced recovery that allowed me to reground myself to only realise how much pressure I had forced on myself. With a break from design, only did I realise how I was trying to satisfy my sense of self-worth by becoming a ‘winner’.
It taught me that all those things I imposed on myself didn’t matter. Ever since, I have just tried to do things that I enjoy and find fun.
R: What thought or tip would you give to yourself in the past?
Peter: I would also tell myself to enjoy creating and designing more as opposed to designing to impress others. Or create businesses for the sake of creating a business. I would tell myself to ignore all the superficial reasons of doing anything and truly understand why you want to do things.
Instead, I would say, do things that really matter. Solve real problems, provide real value. And do all that while enjoying yourself.
And through this mindset, I find that my work has become more meaningful and in turn, I find greater satisfaction in what I create.
R: What would you suggest reading to young students?
Peter: I suggest reading about problem-solving to really understand and gain the ability to break down design problems through first principals. Through this, you will be able to solve the most complex problems.
Consume medium articles like crazy. Read books like crazy. The more you read over time about business, design and other fields, the more understanding you will gain.
I think, reading as much as I could in the past about anything that interested me, helped me discover many different ways of thinking and in turn develop my own opinions / ways of thinking.
Currently, I am learning about efficient methods of deloying code, blockchain technology & alt-coins and the applications of artificial intelligence.
R: What is going to look like future?
Peter: I see myself doing a computer science degree, and working in product management for a short while before I head off abroad. Hopefully for Silicon Valley, Shanghai or even Shenzhen.
In the future, I can see myself helping to develop young tech talent and doing something in the education space.
R: What would you like to create or to see developed? VR stuff?
Peter: I would love to see a drive in the growth and development of product design (human centred design) talent in the tech space.
I predict mainstream adoption and use of blockchain technology in 5–7 years. But it is still a long shot prediction.
Currently, I am looking into creating AI powered software to help product people develop better products easier. Right now, I am just doing a boat load of research, understanding the workflows of designers and product managers from all over the world.
I have a couple problems, I am trying to scope out. But it is all validation right now and testing the feasibility / quality of the AI driven engine that is potentially going to be used.
