Insights into UX and Design Thinking with Shawn Weigand
Ever push a door that looks like it should be pushed only to find that it has to be pulled to open? Ever tap on button on your phone so many times not knowing if it registered your touch or not to the point of everything freezing? Many tend to blame themselves for impatience or stupidity but most of the time, the design is what’s at fault. These small nuances in design make a huge impact on how people interact with technology everyday.
This past week, I had the opportunity to meet with Shawn Weigand, a fourth year Systems Engineer at UV with a passion for design, to discuss his thoughts on why having a good perspective on design is so important in everyday life. Many Systems Engineers go down a more traditional consulting path, but Shawn is melding his passion for design with the Systems thinking in order to maximize his knowledge of the world as he knows it. Next Friday, September 25th, he will be teaching HackCville’s very first Crash Course called “Intro to UX and Design Thinking,” a two hour Zoom call giving anyone who attends unique insight on design thinking. One thing that really stuck out to me from our talk this past week was the universality of design thinking and how it applies to so many fields. Whether you’re in business, healthcare, science, you name it, design plays an important role in the technologies everyone interacts with. Here’s what Shawn had to say during our Zoom call:
Tell me about why you chose to be a systems engineer.
“I liked the whole critical thinking aspect of it, being able to come up with solutions to problems and using data for that and conducting different data and systems analysis. Systems is definitely a good choice and I’m hoping to stick with those skills in the future.”
How you get into UX and Design?
“This goes back to last summer when I saw HackCville’s Launch program and I applied for it and I don’t why I chose the UX track but it just looked interesting to me, designing a website. In my mind I was like maybe I want to start a business one day…If I want a business someday, I’ll have to design a website. After taking Launch over summer, I really liked the whole design thinking aspect of it and I think that’s what really kept me going with it and you know wanting to teach Wireframe and throughout my internship last summer, I worked with Knot Standard which is a custom Suit company so I was doing UX for them and through that i definitely liked the whole design thinking aspect of it and I think it meshes well with the Systems Engineering thinking of it.”
How has your knowledge of UX and Design changed your perspective on life and influenced how you perceive the world?
“It’s definitely more of a user centric view of the world…thinking about why this is a successful product and tracing it back to the users and thinking about why, based on what they tell you, they make certain decisions. So I think that applies to anything in the world that is successful when you bring it down to the customers and you get their feedback, usually it’s meeting all the user’s needs.”
Do you plan on melding UX and systems? If so, how?
“That’s definitely what makes my perspective unique coming from UVA. I think that being able to take a problem and look at it from the approach of Systems Engineering where I’m taking the data, I’m using a Systems analysis to come up with a solution that’s backed with data. And then, on the other side, not just using the data, taking it down to the consumers, taking it down to the users themself, and doing the research, talking to them figuring out what they want and using both the design thinking part and taking the data from Systems engineering and using them both to do informed decision making and come up with different solutions. I think that’s definitely what’s unique about doing both Systems and UX and it’s definitely already come in handy in past internships and school projects.”
Why is UX and design knowledge important in everyday life and why should people know the basics of it?
“If someone wants to start a business or make a product or with any problem that is faced, taking it back to the user, people will say certain things and have this opinion but if you just go and talk to the people and find out what they want, a lot of the time, you get a better perspective of the problem as a whole and you can come up with a solution that benefits everybody. So I think it’s a really good problem solving strategy.”
What’s one thing you would tell someone as to why they should take your course?
“If you want to get down to the baseline of how to create something that people actually use and…create a solution for that group then this is the way to do it, design thinking and user experience.”
Design has a huge influence on everyday life and it can definitely provide a leg up for people to have this perspective when solving problems in school, work, and personal life. Find out more about Shawn’s course at https://hccc-uxanddesign.splashthat.com to see what it’s all about!
