I used to think of design as an industrialized artistic endeavor concerning the exterior. Thinking it demanded a certain mastery of aesthetic and intuition of style, I always respected design as a process, but never thought I could partake in it as I often confined myself to, what at least appeared like, more technical domains. As time went on however, I found myself on a journey of identifying further with the role of designer as I uncovered not just what the practice involved, but how it aligned with my strengths, curiosities, and ambitions.

For a long time, I have had my eye on making an impact — looking to better understand the world around me so I could develop ideas and build new things that could address problems and needs I saw. In college, this drive led me to study economics along with a hefty dose of computer science because I believed that to effectively develop impactful products, systems, and solutions, I needed a better, more technical understanding of how the world and its technology worked. I felt that having a strong analytical ability with respect to people, markets, and society combined with the practical capacity to create software and other technology would be enough for me to go on to accomplish the kind of goals I had set for myself.

However, I was missing something. Despite learning a slew of theories, analytical techniques, algorithms, and concepts, I didn’t know how to manifest them into tangible, actionable output that could effectively address anything. I could come up with some ambitious theoretical system that addressed power and ownership disparities between a platform and its end users, but I couldn’t see how, or in what manner, such a system could, or should, be delivered to real people in the real world. In other words, I couldn’t design.

I was somewhat aware of this deficit through the latter years of college, although I couldn’t specifically articulate it as a lack of design prowess — I just felt that my intellectual toolbox was missing the capability to bring an idea or conceptual solution into reality. It was not until I took a bio-inspired design course during one of my final semesters at Berkeley that I began to understand how the practice and process of design was what I wanted, and needed, to develop. As we learned how to comprehend and then apply knowledge and observations of biological mechanisms to the design of products such as toys, synthetic materials, and robotics, I saw how design, in a broad sense, was a process through which technical concepts and ideas could be deployed towards functional, pragmatic purposes. I realized that the discipline of design could be what I was in search of: that crucial translational layer that applied concept to reality.

Not too long afterwards, my relationship with design evolved further when working at a small startup developing an online marketplace for grocers and food producers. Here, I saw, firsthand, how a thoughtful approach to design could have a tangible impact on business outcomes. In the beginning, our product had fairly primitive navigation requiring an unintuitive filter system for search. We could see, through analytics, how users would grow frustrated during sessions and eventually leave without ever purchasing or reordering anything — causing a notably negative impact on the business. After developing usability improvements such as full-text search and a new filtering experience, and seeing how they increased marketplace transaction volume, I learned just how integral fundamental design decisions were to the successful execution of a product and business. While through the bio-inspired design course I learned about the mindset and process of design, and how it could aid in my endeavors, it was from this experience that I discovered just how crucial design was to the execution of an aim and thus the viability of a vision.

Eventually, I began to more seriously engage with design, applying it as a vehicle through which I could deploy ideas. For example, I co-founded a direct-to-consumer company that designed a reusable container product that could help fight the proliferation of single-use containers. I also taught myself more about digital product design and learned to prototype product ideas via iOS development. Throughout these experiences, as I developed my design skill set and gained more intimate understanding of the discipline, my relationship with design expanded as my experience with it blended and intersected ever further with technical tasks and efforts seemingly unrelated to design. Specifically, in working on software implementation or dealing with manufacturing processes, I came to understand how design itself was actually an inherently technical subject. I saw how design decisions significantly impacted technical choices and outcomes which meant that, to be effective, designers had to have considerable technical understanding themselves.

This made me realize something important: design wasn’t simply a translational layer from concept to reality, it was an approach that demanded cross-functional understanding across the technical, creative, societal, and strategic — it was about deeply understanding problems. This appreciation is what made me see that I’m a designer at heart. All that time I spent thinking, learning, and building through my own work, trying to address problems I saw in the world, I was really just designing.