UX / UI Design Researcher?

My professional experience began with my own jewelry line. I fell into it. Someone asked if they could buy a pair of earrings I designed for a class project in undergrad. Next thing you know I am selling my jewelry around the world, my work printed in international magazines and worn by celebrities. I was the ripe age of 24.

Eventually, I began to dislike the fashion industry. My personal desire for accolades by others had been well sated. My personal proprieties shifted, I wanted to help people. How could I help people with design? I began working for non-profits, using graphic design to help people, serving the organizations I worked for.

After working as a graphic designer for several years freelance and then full-time, I felt there was something missing. At first I could not put my finger on it, it kept eluding me. I knew I had more to contribute then making something look good.

Side note: I have an extreme sense of empathy and have friends joke I am psychic. I am not psychic, I am however really good at reading people; understanding how people think and communicate. A friend once sent me a text telling me she was shopping. I knew that something was wrong, simply by the tone of her text. Maybe I am psychic but I think I have really great intuition. Is there a job where I can use my intuition and design skills?

“The need for empathy in design is becoming an increasingly important factor. With most technologies now used by a whole range of people, from different cultures, with a variety of physical, mental, and situational constraints, we must develop an understanding of how we can design products that appeal to, support and enable people. We cannot appreciate what it means to be each and every person that uses a product, but through the use of an empathic design approach we can come to understand how people behave, feel, and tackle the problems in their lives with the use of our products.”
— https://www.interaction-design.org/literature/article/empathic-design-is-empathy-the-ux-holy-grail