I spent a lot of time complaining about how the Information Technology (I.T.) program and my university in general does not have many graphic design classes offered to non-design major students. When I decided I wanted to UX design a couple years ago I started get hungry for some graphic design materials and how to skill up in it. I did much as I could from watching Youtube videos (2 weeks in to the Fall semester) until I got swamped with I.T. projects and labs. I had to build my own OS system from scratch and I decided to do that in Assembly and C… Built my own database and website for my dream chicken and boba tea delivery business, built a chat system through a network that I designed on GNS3, and the list goes on. When I finally got through my junior year I found myself inspired again when I started to look for a summer internship in UX. I was rejected from everyone and they kindly told me that although my user research skills are descent, my graphic design skills sucked.

It did.

Here are some screens from when I first started prototyping in 2017.

Exhibit 1:

My first project ever. An app for testing glucose levels for diabetics.

Exhibit 2:

Second business idea for boba tea and Korean fried chicken delivery service for mobile.

Exhibit 3

My login page for boba tea delivery service that I was talking about earlier.

Yikes.

I’ll have to give myself some credit though. With no graphic design classes or mentors I did ok. I got better and better as I found some new tools and some practice. Anyway, I was swiping through Medium one day and found this article 100 Days of Vector Illustration by: Tiantian Xu. I was crazy inspired and that is why I started to do it. I’ll show those interviewers (I’ll probably never see again) what I’m made of. But really it was because I wanted to get better and I loved to design.