1. Miki Bin
From audiovisual performances to socially impactful designs, Miki Bin is a multidisciplinary interaction designer with a critical lens. She is currently a master's candidate of MCHI+D at University of Washington.
Why did you decide to major in IMA?
I didn’t think IMA was my thing at first. In my freshman year, I accidentally enrolled in two IMA electives that didn’t have any prerequisites, but they were both extremely difficult. I didn’t even know how I finished those classes. I knew nothing about coding and had no idea what I was doing. Then I figured if classes without prerequisites were this hard, then IMA was probably not for me.
In my sophomore year, I took Interaction Lab to fulfill my core requirements. My teammate wasn’t very devoted to the projects and I basically had to do everything myself. I ended up spending a lot of time in the IMA lab, learning through all kinds of experiments. I also really enjoyed being around the people in the lab. I got an A in the class, which encouraged me to continue to take Communications Lab. After that, I knew IMA was for me.
How did I know IMA was for me? I guess what is most important to me is people. At IMA, everyone is friendly and always willing to talk and help. That environment makes me happy. That’s all that matters. I thought I would want to be working in an environment like this.
What did you learn in IMA? Did you have a focus?
This is a very good question because I’m still not sure where my focus is. When I was choosing my IMA classes, I based it more on the professor than on the class topic. A lot of the time I didn’t even know what the class was about when I enrolled. If I had to pick a focus, I would say I was doing more of creative coding and UX (User Experience).
When I was in New York the second semester of my junior year, I felt that I needed to take all the IMA courses that I can take, which I now realize was unnecessary. Many courses there don’t go into depth. The class I appreciated the most is Yolanda’s (Professor Yolanda Cuomo, professor at NYU Tisch Photography), because how she approaches graphic design is really inspiring and helps me find my passion for design.
I got interested in performance after taking Professor Aly Rose’s Dance class. So when I was taking Advanced Creative Coding I produced a live dance performance using motion-capture. After that, I got really into audiovisual performances. When I came back to Shanghai, I took Professor Eric Parren’s Audiovisual Performance. I feel very lucky to have such an amazing artist to be my professor. He not only knows how to use all the tools but also gives me a lot of creative freedom. In addition to teaching me how to VJ using MaxMSP, connecting it with Arudio and Processing for performance, he was also a big help to my own new media performance and even performed in it!
Is there anything that you don’t like or realized it wasn’t for you after learning?
It depends on how much you learn and how deep you get. I’m really bad at Arduino. When I was taking Interaction Lab, my project was 99% processing and 1% arduino. But now I’m actually using Arduino for a project that I’m doing at the University of Washington. It’s an educational playground for K-12 children to learn about electricity. Compared to purely digital interface design, being able to write code and make a tangible interface with Arduino feels good.
What is the project that you are the most proud of?
I produced a live audiovisual dance performance! It was stressful because it was my senior year, in addition to the performance I had four classes, an internship, and graduate school applications. But it was something that I wanted to do.
After taking Eric’s class, I felt that I could totally be a VJ. At first, I thought I only needed to make the content, find a dancer, and it’s done. However, it turned out to be way more complicated than that. There were so many things to consider. I needed to write proposals, find a venue and sponsorship, and convince dancers and musicians to help me do it. And then there was the rehearsal. It was so overwhelming.
But I did it eventually, by talking to everyone that I could talk to, classmates, professors, people I know from going to performances, people from the organization that I used to volunteer with. I told the musician that I already found a venue and a dancer, told the dancer I already found a venue and a musician and told the venue that I’ve found the people to do the performance. I just did it like that, going around telling people that I was prepared when I wasn’t.
But I didn’t sell tickets and didn’t find any sponsors either. It was pretty expensive to cover everyone’s transportation and meals and borrow professional equipment. So I probably won’t do this by myself again. But it was great, at least I managed to produce an hour long of performance! I’m really proud that I got it done.
What was the biggest challenge for you as an IMA major?
Finding a direction. Unlike finance or accounting majors, there isn’t a clear path for you to follow. As an IMA major nobody will tell you what to do. It’s all about what you want to do. This can be difficult.
I found my direction by doing internships. At school, you only need to do your class projects well, but if you take a look in the industry, you will realize that there is so much more. For example, if you want to do something related to Arduino, you might wanna find out what kinds of jobs there are in the industry? What are the people doing these jobs like?
I wasn’t sure about UX at first because I felt like you have to be in the good firms to actually do something meaningful, otherwise it’s just making wireframes based on requirements, which is boring.
My first internship that had something to do with design was in an industrial design consulting firm. I was a marketing intern and my job was just writing posts on WeChat and LinkedIn about what we’ve accomplished. But I was really happy that I met many awesome young designers there. They were all interns and I can really feel their passion and ideas about design when talking to them, and it was very inspiring. At that time I already finished my sophomore year and I thought it was too late to study Industrial Design, but I was also interested in User Experience Design.
During the summer after my junior year, I worked as a Creative Technologist Intern at AKQA, directly under the Creative Director. She graduated from Art Center and has a very high standard for deliverables and presentations. She taught us how to present our ideas and solutions with mockups. She went into detail and always pushed us to think more, which was a great learning experience.
However, that job made me feel like there are few positions like Creative Technologist in agencies in China. The agency only had an internship, no full-time position. You can only make what you can make. It’s hard to learn anything or have anyone from the same discipline to teach you. It’s also very tiring working at agencies. There’s no such thing as life, everyone is always working until 8, 9 pm. But I still really appreciate this experience, because I was thinking really hard every day about how to make an idea come into reality.
Then I did a 6-month internship at Sony. The people there are wonderful and I was in a great mood every day. I was helping them design their Intranet and also took part in some user research. The designer I was working for had a lot of ideas and also knew how to make presentations and deliver his vision. I learned a lot just from watching how he does things. It was a small team, one designer with two interns, so I was able to do a wide scope of things.
How did you decide to apply for MS in HCI?
I actually applied for two tracks. I applied for New Media masters as well. I wasn’t thinking a lot while applying and only applied for the best three schools for each track (CMU, Gatech, and UW for HCI, RISD, RCA, Art Center for New Media Arts). I got two offers, one from the University of Washington and one from Art Center. Art Center’s tuition was really expensive so I chose UW. It was an easy choice.
Why did you choose to apply for masters?
I felt like I couldn’t get a job. Now that I think about it I wasn’t seriously looking as well. Finding a job seemed hard and I didn’t have any solid UX experience. I also didn’t want to be the traditional UX designer, I wanted to do something cool and wanted to keep trying new things, like VR. My capstone project was made with VR. University of Washington also has a VR lab.
How has the IMA experience made an impact on you?
It changed the way I learn. I think all IMA people would consider Google as their alternative brain. I used to go to the fellows when I ran into problems or things I didn’t know, but then I realized that everyone will go to Google, Stackoverflow, Youtube tutorials. They had the answers. You will realize it’s not necessary anymore to ask others and develop your own ability to learn.
A bigger change is on the attitude. I used to feel like “I can’t do this, I can’t do that”. But now I feel like there’s nothing I can’t do. It’s the Internet Era and you can do anything! I even learned how to drive by watching Youtube videos. I haven’t swum in a while, and after searching ‘how to elegantly freestyle’ on Youtube, my swimming skills immediately improved! Wow, thank you IMA.
Do you think there is anything that you learned outside of IMA that was especially important?
Presentation skills. The master level of presentations can make everything make sense. As a student at IMA, as long as you make something, show that you’ve put in efforts, you will get a pretty good grade. But it’s different at the workplace, for example, how to connect an idea with your own methodology and the company’s culture.
Is there anything lately that has inspired/impressed you?
I’ve been helping out with a new media art performance lately and I’m learning a lot. The performance I produced made me realize how I lack experience when it comes to planning and there are tons of details to consider: the position of sockets and projectors, how to coordinate everything… it’s all very inspiring. I’m really interested in DJ and VJ. I will keep exploring it as a passion in the future.
Any honest advice for IMA majors?
It really depends. I think my advice might not be applicable to the artsy ones. But if you want to find a job, I think it’s good to start exploring early. For example, you can find an internship. It might be completely irrelevant to what you end up doing, but it will help you understand what it is that you want and learn about the industry. On every internship, you will meet new people and they have their own gigs too. The friends I made from previous internships were really helpful. We still talk and they will tell me about what they are doing, always leading me to discover new things.
