Spotify Design Team
To showcase our band members, from time to time we put a Spotifier within the limelight. Today’s headliner is Hui Yuan, Product Designer for Data & Insights Platform in New York. Put in your headphones, hit play, and skim alongside!
Questions & Answers
Why are you a designer?
I used to be interested in structure within the first place and began studying portray and illustration. After spending 7 years learning graphic design and new media arts, in addition to twiddling with installations, I bought an opportunity to be a curator for up to date artwork exhibitions. I naturally gravitated in direction of the thought of being a designer quickly after as a result of I actually love the sensation of fixing complicated issues by offering a complete and chic design answer.
Design to me is far more than creating one thing stunning. It’s the mind-set, the way in which of working and the way in which of fulfilling my life.
Describe your job at Spotify with out utilizing the phrases “design” or “designer.”
My staff strives to offer an immersed knowledge visualization world and assist all of the Spotifiers to have the ability to discover and visualize knowledge, and get insights to tell their enterprise choices effectively. I’m at all times in fixed communications with quite a lot of customers engaged on insights artifacts, and interact in decreasing the obstacles between them and the complicated knowledge world.
Show us an image of your desk, and clarify why it appears to be like the way it does.
Monitor.
MUJI Notebook: Love to sketch some stream, construction or interface on a clean pocket book. I’ve used three of the identical notebooks prior to now.
Coffee mug: I bought this from the Starbucks Reserve Roastery in Shanghai it holds quite a lot of recollections.
LEGO Flowers: Roses, daisies, asters, and poppies, and so forth. My most up-to-date favourite LEGO items. They seem like actual flowers from a far distance. I like how inventive they’re to imitate the true issues in life to block-ish stuff, and the way they match within the vases I bought!
Diptyque candle: I’ve quite a lot of candles at house and typically I’m attracted by the package deal and the sample outdoors.
Hand lotion.
Tissue field. It’s a present from my buddy. Love the summary fluid sample on it.
Tell us a few time you beat an intimidating design problem.
In my earlier job, I labored in a tech firm that gives enterprise intelligence platforms to well-established enterprises across the globe. Working on enterprise functions was at all times difficult, typically you must steadiness restricted assets and distinct buyer wants and create one thing that has not been created earlier than in a brand new frontier.
A number of years in the past, I wanted to steer a small design staff to offer a brand new interplay design system for the information visualizations on cellular gadgets. At that point, only a few corporations supplied interactive visualizations on the touchscreen and it could encourage mobility working environments loads. In the two years of improvement, I labored with design staff members in several continents to discover and create design options beneath everchanging cellular platform design rules and applied sciences. I realized two issues from this:
Be interested by every thing. For me, design is at all times about uncovering new alternatives within the present world. Curiosity drives me to study the know-how behind the scenes, rationales behind enterprise choices and techniques behind activity prioritizations.
Embrace adjustments and revolution. The world adjustments so does design. Now, the way in which of design is totally totally different from the way in which it was ten years in the past. Embracing adjustments and adapting ourselves to the newest traits, the newest mind-set, and the newest know-how means we’re extra related to the world and our customers than ever earlier than.
Name three non-designers you’re feeling impressed by when designing.
Tadao Ando: Ando’s philosophy of emphasizing nothingness and empty area to characterize the fantastic thing about simplicity. It additionally represents the Asian spiritual time period Zen, the inside feeling of the constructing somewhat than outward look. Influenced by his structure model, I at all times have the “Less is More” mantra when doing my design.
Tracey Chang: From Miss New York to CNBC information anchor, Tracey Chen was one of many first Chinese-American YouTubers I adopted. Tracey was honoured by former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani for her excellent contributions to the Asian American group, and was given the Asian American Excellence Award. Her experiences and successes in empowering girls and cross-cultural communication encourage me in each work and life.
My grandfather: Taught by Liu Haisu, the founding father of the primary college of nice arts in trendy China, my grandfather has established a household ambiance to take pleasure in and recognize nice arts. The good recollections with him throughout my childhood have at all times served as a beacon of my ardour for design.
What would your self-portrait seem like?
Any last shout-outs or stuff you’d wish to share?
An enormous shout out to Pilar Serna, my present supervisor for being a implausible mentor and accomplice throughout my time at Spotify, and due to Monospace designers who’re collaborative and clever, and who I get quite a lot of inspiration from.
A shout out to the squads I’ve labored with, Polaris and The Who, for making me really feel like household and serving to me ramp up the stuff shortly.
Also need to thank my accomplice and household for being supportive. I wouldn’t be right here with out you all!
Credits
Spotify Design Team
We’re a cross-disciplinary staff of people that like to create nice experiences and make significant connections between listeners and creators.