HCDE Alum Hasani Burns shares his journey from engineering to design

ALB: Tell me about your background?

What a journey. I went to college as a complete nerd, but someone who also played a lot of sports. I went to Hampton University thinking I was going to study something that would allow me to make video games.

I went back and forth with my major, but knew I wanted to be in technology. I played football. It was tough being a student athlete. In the end, I focused on my studies and graduated as an engineering student.

While I’m not a 4.0 student, I have a strong work ethic and did a lot of internships and other extracurriculars that helped me excel. I published research, both refereed and non-refereed with some esteemed organizations like Carnegie Mellon University, and the Virginia Space Grant Consortium.

Between my Junior and Senior year I had an epiphany, why are we building the things we are building? I know how to build solid code and things that are technically sound, but wanted to understand if we were building the things people would even want.

I had a mentor in Dr. Jessica Jones, who at the time of my final years was pursuing her graduate education at Clemson University in the form of a Master’s in Computer Science, focused on human-centered and interactive computing. She went on to complete her doctorate from the University of Florida in Human-Centered Computing.

I started to explore human-centered design programs and looked at Clemson and the University of Washington. I chose the UW’s Human Centered Design and Engineering program mainly because of the class choices.

ALB: Tell me about your time at the UW’s HCDE program.

The HCDE program was what I was looking for. I first fulfilled the certificate program and then got my Master’s.

When I first started, I was dreading school, then I psyched myself up. I remember one of the first classes I took, a User Centered Design 500-level class on the core principles of UX. We learned things like, “you are not your user,” and specifics on the design process. This is exactly what I was looking for, exactly what I needed.

I got a chance to learn and think about what I aligned with more, research or design. I wanted to preserve my technical skills while I focused on user experience design. Because of my engineering background, I could do something called: Full stack design.

My second year into the program, I had a revelation, while I was concentrating on design, research can’t be ignored. I really paid attention to classes and opportunities in research along with design.

ALB: Are there instructors or teachers who influenced you?

My journey was heavily and positively influenced by Dr. Muhammad, department chair at Hampton University, who continues to be a beacon of innovation and opportunity for the wonderful department there. Additionally, Dr. Chutima Boonthum-Denecke, or “Dr. B” as we all knew her, was my research advisor and one who helped me to champion my own extra-curricular efforts.

At the UW, Carla DiFranco was my first exposure to International UX, and that class gave me a perspective that is forever-lasting. Finally, Doug Pyle gave me the warmest welcome into my first course of graduate school, and helped to answer my question of “what in the world have I gotten myself into!”

ALB: What are you doing now?

I’m a Senior UX Designer at Livingston International. Livingston is a global customs broker, logistics, and trade management company. I work on a few applications looking at digital efficiencies. It’s a field I’ve never touched before.

I don’t want to call myself a hybrid or a unicorn, but I have a lot of responsibilities from discovery to creating mockups, managing iterations and working closely with the front-end development team. Because of my engineering background, to some extent, I even get to build the scaffolding of the pages we create. It’s unique that I get to be part of the entire design process.

This is the first time my role was solely as a designer. Being in UX is exciting. Software and engineering jobs are more similar than UX ones. This is why I appreciate working in user design, because the work can vary so much from position to position.

I have a good foundation and appreciate the complex dimensions in UX, it’s exciting.

ALB: What advice would you provide new HCDE grads?

There is so much advice I would like to share.

A couple may sound cliché, but want to share because they can be very helpful.

Failure is key and it’s important.

When at UW I wanted to be hired as a UX designer, not in a technical job. I remember going to a career fair and when talking with recruiters, they always pegged me in developer roles. It took eight years to be hired solely as a UX designer.

I’m not going to say it’s hard to fail the Master’s program, but it’s easy not to get the most out of it. You can go through the motions, but it’s a disservice to yourself. Come into HCDE thinking broader than the classroom, there are talks, conferences and plenty of mentors.

Make friends while going through the program. Your classmates are top notch with a breadth of experience including international students. I love being able to collaborate and learn from others and got a lot from the other students.

Think through how you may measure success for yourself.

I spoke recently at Convey UX and shared that a lot of people may not understand what UX is. This is an opportunity. We understand how to break down a problem, knowing how to understand user needs. Those of us in UX are equipped with wings. Wings, that won’t bind you, but open up opportunities.