Unexpected UX Journeys: Interview with Taiwanese Animator Turned UX Designer Luping Yeh
Learn how to break into UX from a Workday UX designer with a nontraditional UX background.
Interview conducted and edited by Emma Siegel, Product Designer and Researcher
The individuals who make up Workday’s User Experience organization have a wide variety of career backgrounds and skills. These experiences offer us a more holistic understanding of our users and how they interact with our products. In this series, we’ll meet some of Workday’s team members and learn about their non-traditional UX backgrounds.
Luping Yeh is a Product Designer on Workday’s Financials team in Pleasanton, CA.
When you were younger, what did you want to be when you grew up?
When I was little, I was very into art. I didn’t have any formal training, but that’s where my passions lay. I grew up in Taiwan, where becoming an artist was kind of an unrealistic dream. In Taiwan, a musician or artist is not considered real career but just a hobby or interest. I never talked to my parents to say I wanted to be an artist — it was more for my own interests and habits.
In school, I always looked forward to art classes. To explore my interest in art outside of school, I’d draw on papers or sketchbooks. Drawing allowed me to immerse myself and draw anything.
Where did you go to school and what did you study?
I graduated from Taiwan University of Art and majored in multimedia and animation. In the multimedia program, we were exposed to a variety of media forms and could choose what we wanted to focus on. After a few years of studying, I found my passion in video art and animation. I did a thesis and capstone focused on creating a live-action video combined with animation.
What did you learn studying multimedia and animation that you use in your UX role?
When I create a live-action animation, I have to think about what I want the viewer to see. It’s also a point of view so I need to think about and design the sequence. It’s not necessarily about a static image; it’s more about the relationship between these two sequences.
This skillset has been helpful because interaction design also focuses on sequences that create interactions.
What did you do after graduating?
After graduation, my first job was as a multimedia designer; I mostly created small animations for web content. After a few years, I got tired of that job because I wanted to think about the user’s holistic experience.
How did you get started in UX?
My first job in UX design was for IT software. I didn’t have much UX training at that time, and only relied on my background in multimedia design. At first, I was creating icons, but I soon began creating interaction flows. I realized how interesting it is to design wireframes and flows because it’s not just, “you need to make the screen pretty,” but it’s more “how do you jump from one screen to the other screen?”
A few years later, my husband got a job in the US and we moved from Taiwan to America. Even though I had a few years of UX experience, I didn’t have any degrees or training in the US or in user experience, so it was hard for me to find a UX job. I enrolled in UT Austin for information science with a focus on HCI to start my formal training in UX.
In school, I learned how to involve a user’s voice during the design process, how to interview people and how to consolidate what I learn from users. I learned more methodology that I could use in the future to tackle design challenges or conduct user research.
What does an average day at Workday look like for you?
As a product designer in Workday Financials, I work on a few different product areas. Many of our projects come from highly-requested features from customers. My average day includes meeting with stakeholders to clarify problems, user needs and scope, and then producing designs accordingly. Lately, I have also been also working closely with other Financials designers to reimagine our product’s vision for a better user experience.
Every day is a different day. As a designer, it’s a privilege that we are able to tackle different projects. Within Financials, every project is a different problem to solve.
How are you involved in the UX community outside of work?
When I was working in Taiwan, I made a lot of friends in the UX field who later also started working overseas. I have friends working in China, Singapore and the UK. We talk on Facebook to learn how the UX culture is different across different countries and what kind of projects they are targeting. It’s interesting to see how people tackle UX in different cultures and their perspectives.
What do you do when you have free time?
I follow a lot of Pinterest boards to collect ideas for houseplant projects, cool succulent arrangements and interior design. I don’t have any formal training in this — it’s mostly self-learning, trial and error and exploring new things. I use different succulents or indoor plants to decorate the house and move them around and see how that goes.
What inspires you?
People and cultures inspire me. I grew up in Taiwan, so the people I meet and the culture I experience here are different from my past. Some are interesting and some are challenging. Either way, it’s inspiring to get myself out of the comfort zone and experience new things.
To continue this conversation, you can connect with Luping on LinkedIn.
