On her discovery of industrial design

I grew up in Guangzhou, China. People say it’s the south gate of China, it’s a very active city because it’s close to Hong Kong, and was the first economically open city in mainland China. I liked art when I was little, so any moment I could find I spent painting, drawing, observing and studying. This passion led me to attend the Guangzhou Academy of Fine Art. When I was training to be an artist I was captivated with graphic design and even wanted to become a graphic designer but then in the end I went to a school that didn’t have graphic design program the year I began. That forced me to open my mind to what I could become.

At the time in China nobody knew about industrial design and it wasn’t a popular subject. I spoke with some industrial design students and got to know them and it was interesting. I started to teach myself industrial design to prepare for school. What I learned was mainly from magazines and design yearbooks, I was teaching myself. One of the biggest things that influenced me was the idea of “design is innovation”. To be creative and think differently. To create something that’s outside the realm of normal thinking — building connections between objects and humans, creating better user experience with beautiful objects.

This focus on innovation was my personal mantra in school and was the reason I decided to come to the United States. At the time China didn’t have the environment to cultivate innovative minds; people just looked at foreign magazines or advertisements and then copied the designs. I didn’t see a place for me to learn more, and I came to San Francisco to study. While working on my master’s in industrial design, I practiced in local design consultancy.

After graduation , I began working at fuseproject. As my career developed I realized that innovation must be paired with perseverance. How do you push your idea forward? How do you continue to refine the details in collaboration with engineering and especially in production? Lots of creativity is lost in these transitions. How do you continue to push forward to provide innovation from the beginning of ideation through engineering to production? Those processes drive me and support my passions from the beginning to the present.

Right now I’m the director of industrial design at fuseproject, I started here as a junior industrial designer. I’m fortunate to be supported by Yves Behar, a world class Industrial Design team, and these major ventures helping me to do great work.