I was never good with people in my earlier years. Being chubby and growing up in a traditional Asian family does that. Bowl cut and all. It was this almost impressive level of awkwardness and disconnect from everyone around me that sparked my desire for acceptance. Not just by anyone, but by everyone.

How do I talk to people? How do I make someone like me? How do I try to make everyone like me? It was this curiosity that paved the way to becoming a better designer.

I design apps with a user-centric design process. The problem; people are highly unpredictable beasts. I realised over time that hacking relationships unconsciously over the years has helped me understand and predict human behaviour better. Hopefully, they can help you too. First hack:

Instead of trying to be the best at everything, don’t be shit at anything.

My first hack was the belief that ultimate self improvement would lead to being awesome and people would like me for that. In the 9th grade I assumed:

‘If I was the best at everything, I would automatically become interesting and everyone would adore the hell out of me’

Right? Probably. I’ll never know — it took too long. I got good at a few things and didn’t have time for anything else. Interestingly enough, I gained several new friends from those newfound hobbies. I eventually learnt that to have lots in common with people, I simply had to learn enough about lots of things, rather than lots about a few things. I’ve been doing this ever since and conversations I’ve had with strangers are instantly engaging simply because we both know enough about something to get started. I’ve found that being accessible and engaging is something that I benefit from everyday and heavily influences my designs.

Designing a user experience for a new app at it’s earliest stages involves a lot of guesswork. The benefit of having learnt to generate instant rapport with a range of people is that it has given me the key to starting an interesting conversation. In particular:

What will get a person’s attention

What will bore them and when

What will please them and how

When they make key decisions

How to follow that key decision up with a next step

A next step? How do I even begin to guess what people are going to think and how they will respond? Second hack:

Talk to yourself.

Preferably in your own head.

We’ve all done this before; you have a conversation or lose an argument and it’s only when you walk away and re-live it in your head that you realise what you should have said. This happened to me often early on in high school. Struggling to string a sentence together was the norm. I wouldn’t argue simply because I was scared I wouldn’t be able to form the sentence to debate my point.

This is where it began for me. After having a conversation, I would think about what I could have said and what they would have said in response. I would repeat it and refine it. I got quick at this. Before I knew it, not only had I learnt to hold a conversation with people, I began to predict the flow of a conversation as it was happening. In the beginning it was all guesswork and I was wrong a lot. But over time, I was wrong less.

When designing apps and websites, if I could learn to predict an audience’s reactions in a conversation, I could potentially:

Create content based on audience fears, uncertainties and doubts

Understand the order an audience would prefer to consume information

Wireframe a complete user flow quickly and fairly accurately

However, guessing what someone would say next wasn’t where it ended. Last hack:

Fake it ‘til you make it.

Provided you can fake it well enough, of course.

I hate this saying for obvious reasons, but it sums up too many good opportunities that have come my way.

Back in high school, everyone hung in packs. I would float from group to group and do my best to relate to everyone without looking like I was trying to. I had no idea what I was doing, I was just acting like them so we could all be buddies. I must have succeeded because as a result, I was accepted, I outgrew my awkwardness and most importantly, I accidentally learnt about the things that influence people’s decisions.

Successful branding, interface and experience design are heavily reliant on the understanding of human tendencies. If you know how to become accepted and behave around various groups of people, you generally have a good feel about what they might want or need and more importantly, how they make decisions.

My two cents: hang around as many groups as you can to understand them better. Do your very best to make people laugh and adore you. Figure out what they hate and why. It’s through understanding people on this level that will help to:

Create engaging brands

Influence user decisions

Attract desired audiences

Create goal oriented content

Being socially awkward taught me to be curious about why people think the way they do. It taught me to look for patterns in human behaviour. I learnt the meaning of influence and the importance of accessibility. But most importantly, it taught me to shut up and listen.