Yi Luo
Rice University
Houston (29.7° N, 95.3° W)

featuring Vinita Israni, User Experience Manager, Qantas Airways, Sydney, Australia (33.8° S, 151.2° E)

Vinita Israni earned her bachelor’s degree in psychology and studio art at Rice University in 2013. After graduating from Rice, Vinita attended Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) to pursue a master’s degree in communication planning and information design and follow her passion of user experience design (UX design). She explored UX design in various industries after CMU, first joining GE as a UX designer, then Ford Innovation Labs as a senior interaction designer on autonomous vehicles and public transit, and then Amazon as a voice UX designer. She started her current position as a UX manager at Qantas Airways in 2019. 

In each of her professional experiences in distinct industries, Vinita found that UX design serves a very essential role, no matter what industry the designer is in. UX design is not just about “user interface and…creating buttons,” Vinita says. It’s more about the way people think about using a product or service or try to complete a task. Although there is always a “user” in UX design, it’s not always a consumer from the general public. Vinita’s example of a project improving the workflow of pilots before takeoff proves that designers are helpful in every context. The design process can occur in many different forms beyond graphic design; during her time at Amazon, her role was oriented more toward auditory design rather than visual design. UX designers can choose to be a generalist or specialist depending on their strengths and the industry. Vinita refers to the theory of the five love languages, saying that UX is “a matter of understanding what…your language” is, and she describes the UX designer as the glue of the team. They work closely with experts with various backgrounds and speak to business, engineering, and product strategy.

Since UX design was not available to study at Rice, Vinita found her way through various activities. She practiced publication design at a student-run, research publication called Catalyst as its design director, compared the visual art education within Houston to the visual art education within Istanbul as part of Global Urban Lab, and developed graphic design skills as an active freelancer in Houston. Vinita conducted several independent studies with professors in and the use around technology, just out of curiosity, and she found that all of these experiences contributed to her later career in UX design quite well. Her advice to students interested in UX design is to experiment and try a lot of different things, to hunt for the opportunities, and to engage in the community.

Vinita highlights the unchanging necessity of the role of the designer in this everchanging society. Design, especially user experience design, is a very human-centered process. Although the title of UX designer has only been around for several years, this design process has existed for much longer and will continue to exist in the future. New technologies like artificial intelligence, virtual reality, and augmented reality may reshape the challenges designers face, but the actual work will remain the same. Some people argue that automation will eventually replace designers, yet the need for human touch will always exist, and that is what designers provide. The advancements of digital and physical tools are now empowering current designers, and it’s very important to understand what new tools are emerging, what the current trends are, and how designers place themselves in today’s society. As an architecture student interested in UX design, I am very inspired by Vinita’s strong motivation and her story about finding her passion. Her story sheds light on the broad possibilities of a career in UX design.

Highlights from the interview:

When did you first envision yourself as a UX designer?

To give a little bit of background, I graduated Rice in 2013 with a bachelor’s in studio art and psychology. When I first entered Rice, I actually wanted to do pre-med, so I came in as a biochemistry major, changed majors to cognitive sciences, settled on psychology, and then added studio art. I had actually finished all of the pre-med requirements when I decided I didn’t want to do it. I had grown up drawing and being pretty creative but never had really taken a real art class until I got to Rice. I was also really fortunate—my freshman year there was a graphic design course offered, that was the last year that it was being offered ever on campus, and I somehow got into that class and that started my curiosity and just fascination with more digital means of art. At Rice, the studio art major is pretty traditional fine arts. By my junior year I also wanted to just get better at more digital stuff, and so I started freelancing for graphic design, and I did a lot of publication design. I worked for the art department, and I also worked for the recreation center, but then I also found a lot of people within Houston to work for, so I built on a whole community there, which is really cool.

When l left Rice, I was looking at going to grad school—for me it was either medical illustration, because I had obviously finished all of this medical-like coursework and then marrying that with art or doing something that was more traditionally graphic design. I got into Carnegie Mellon’s School of Design program. I did my master’s there, and I graduated in 2015. That was where my eyes were really opened to what design could be. I use the term design because it is very general, and it depends on what flavor of design that you’re looking for…there’s things like graphic design, which now I call visual design, which is things that may be more paper based but can wander into packaging design…Then there’s obviously design of buildings and public spaces, which is more along the lines of architecture. And then there’s this whole new side of things which is software related, which is where user experience and user interfaces come in…again, just a different flavor of design. 

My eyes opened to user experience and the general meaning of design and what that really meant when I went to grad school. The way that the Carnegie Mellon curriculum was set up was that, for grad school, it was much more thinking oriented, so it was more about philosophy and understanding how design can fit into society, versus—for their specific undergrad curriculum—it was much more making oriented and creating things and putting it out there. It was interesting coming from a studio art background that was very much maker heavy.

Do you think there’s any misconceptions about UX design?

Yeah, there’s a lot. It’s interesting…I think everyone thinks UX is just software…just design to make things look pretty, to make things look pretty on an app, and to make it more—I’m using air quotes—”user friendly” and easier on the eyes, but it’s so much more than that. That is one way of one implementation of user experience, but it’s not just user interface and just creating buttons—it’s actually about the way people think about using or trying to carry out a task that they have, potentially, whether that means getting into a vehicle that they can’t drive and getting from point A to point B or…I worked on a project at GE where we were talking to nuclear engineers that power nuclear power plants, and how their workflow was, how they would be checking all these things and what colors meant to them and things like that. It’s understanding what the user needs are at a deeper level, not just the artifacts that you need to create for it. One of the misconceptions is definitely that it’s just to be pretty and all that stuff.

I think there’s definitely another misconception within tech, I think, that the UX designers are the creative people. I don’t necessarily think that. I think engineers are also very creative, everyone can be creative. I think it’s a matter of understanding what is your language. There’s this concept called love languages that is prevalent in psychology…there’s five love languages—for example, physical touch, acts of devotion, quality time, things like that—so there’s five of those. For you, understanding love may mean acts of devotion and for me it might be quality time. Because I know that it’s acts of devotion for you, I will do that to make you feel loved, and vice versa, even though that may not be the way that you understand love. And so I bring up this concept because I think that it’s actually applied to creativity very strongly. Everyone is creative, but it’s the language that they speak that they understand may be different. UX designers end up speaking a lot of different languages, and that’s why they end up being the glue. They can speak to the business side of things because they can understand their perspective—“Okay, this is how this could be marketed, this is how this would be actually be adopted.” They can speak to the engineering side of things because they have some amount technical knowledge to understand, “Hey, this is how this would be implemented, this would take this much time, so maybe we should do it some other way.” They also speak to the product and strategy side of things…“Okay, how will this evolve over time?” In my perspective, it’s a role that speaks a lot of different languages to a lot of people, but I think everyone understands it in their own language, so it sometimes gets pigeonholed into different things.

I think there’s also this misconception that the designers work on consumer products—like they work on Facebook, and they work on Microsoft Suite, or Google and things like that—whereas, actually, designers are pretty useful and can be helpful in every context, right? So I work in aviation…and I don’t work on anything that is actually public facing. I don’t work on the website, I don’t work on the apps, I work on something that’s internal but also very critical to pilots being able to take the planes off the ground and fly them.

For the non-digital UX designer, is it more about the entire design, the experience’s flow, or…?

Yeah, it depends on the context again, what kind of domain that you’re actually working in, but it’s about understanding what that flow is, but what are the touch points, too. Who are the people involved, how are they working together, what are those touch points, what are the things that you could actually help make better, where are things getting stuck, or where are things getting slowed down, and how can we make that a more seamless transition?

There was a project, really long time ago, where it was also around pilot workflow and how do we get the pilots to go faster, in terms of being able to turn around the plane quickly—you land and then the next flight is in maybe an hour, so how do you get them all the things they need to prep and get the plane, get everyone boarded, and off the ground again? And the first thing that comes to everyone’s mind is like, “Oh, iPad, right?” There’s this additional tool; they can just have a checklist, and you go, “Bam, bam, bam!” An iPad is actually really irritating to navigate when you’re in a really high pressure environment, because everything lives in a different app. Depending on what the fuel load is, what’s going on the plane, what’s in the cargo, you’re checking up to 10-15 different apps, and it’s not really all tied together, and it’s different for each flight. The research shows that it was actually easier to have a physical list. Pilots actually use a lot of paper, even within the cockpit, and it was easier for them to take a pen to paper and write all the thing out that they needed to do than it was to actually go through the iPad…when that’s the case, then how can we help whatever’s on the paper? Instead of just giving them a blank piece of paper, can we have some kind of template for them to start with to make it easier so they’re not rewriting and redrawing things? They can just start with this and then run with it. So, again, you’re not replacing anything…

It’s taking a step back, understanding how it’s done, and then how can we make it better from their perspective, not how you personally think it should be…Whenever someone says, “Let’s make it digital,” I always give that example—paper, because it’s literally faster. The efficiency improved significantly by allowing them to continue using  paper that was just templated to their mental model so they could go faster.

How do you think science and technology development are currently reshaping the work you do? What changes do you foresee in your specific UX design area?

There’s lots. Another thing to think about is that user experience as a field, or as an industry, has only come to light in the last, I would say, maybe 7 years. User experience has been done forever; it’s been around for years. It has never been called that, but it has been around forever…

There’s a lot of things in terms of tech on the emerging horizon, so obviously AI, voice design, definitely virtual assistants…VR, AR, all along that side, that whole realm of things, is also emerging. There’s a lot more automation that is coming to light…there’s some people that believe that designers will no longer exist because of automation, but I don’t think that’s true. I think there will always be a need for a human touch to things and that’s what designers provide, so it’s not going away anytime soon; it’s just that the title will change and the things we work on will change…

I think for designers, tools can still constantly change all the time…New tools come up all the time to make it easier to be able to create things, which I think is great, so you’re always on your tippy toes learning new things…I think the tools are changing. I think, for the most part, they are empowering. I think as a designer, you also have to figure out what are maybe two or three things in your toolkit that you just know really well, and can whip out whenever you need to, versus—learning all the different tools.  There has to be a balance—otherwise I think you could spend all of your free time just learning all of the different tools.

What advice would you give to a student that’s interested in UX design?

There’s a lot…in my time at Rice, I just tried so many different things. I was part of the Urban Policy Lab, where…[Ipek] led a group of students to Istanbul, and we were comparing public policies and researching different things, depending on our interests. I compared the visual art education within Houston to the visual art education within Istanbul. I worked for a student-run research publication called Catalyst, where I was the design director, and so I was able to fine tune my pixel-pushing skills a bit. I freelanced a lot, quite a lot, in Houston, which is awesome…Even though UX wasn’t offered in a formal way [at Rice], I learned how to find the experiences I wanted to have and pursue those, which I think is really important. That’s one piece of advice I would give—there might not be all these formal things, but just go and experiment and, at the end of the day, you’ll be surprised that it all actually comes together. It may not make all the sense when you’re at school, but I can definitely say that after the fact, I’m like, “Oh, I studied this in psychology, and then this is how you know this relates to this in design!” And things like that, so I thought that it was really incredible.

It was funny, when I went to Carnegie Mellon, and I was like, “Oh yeah, I majored in psychology and art,” and then they’re like, “Oh, that is the perfect combination for design!” But I didn’t know that at that time, so I highly encourage you to take classes in just a variety of majors. I mean psychology and art are obviously really good towards design, but just wander and see. I took an amazing creative writing course my senior year, and I regret that I took it senior year, because it was so amazing. I would’ve loved to be writing all four years and actually doing that creative writing. When I started at Amazon, and I was working on voice design stuff, it involved a lot of writing, obviously, because there’s no visuals. And I was actually thinking back to that creative writing class that I took at Rice…it’s funny how it all comes together.

So my advice would be to experiment, try a lot of different things, create opportunities if you feel like there aren’topportunities. I did a couple of independent studies with professors that I found, where I was just really curious. It’s funny in retrospect because I did an independent study around how iPads were used in hospitals and medical situations— which is totally relevant to you as a UXer—but at the time, I was like, “I just have this question, and I want to answer it.” And the professor was super supportive and helped guide me through the semester. So if you don’t find the opportunity, go hunt for it. I did that—I mean, independent studies are great, but also when I was freelancing, that was a lot of me just trying to find different things and experiment.

Get involved in the community as well. Houston has a growing design community, so the more you engage with them and understand and get connected and see different perspectives and different things, I think it helps shape your vision, too. And, also…for the longest time, I was really afraid of calling myself a graphic designer…but just own it. I had a really good friend who just really pushed me and was like, “Nope, you’re a graphic designer now!” It, oddly enough, helped me develop the confidence to just own it and then start really finding opportunities that were in line with what I was looking for. A little bit of fake it until you make it, as well.

Interview excerpts have been lightly edited for clarity and readability and approved by the interviewee.