Hi, I’m Sophia Yang. I love the idea of user-centered design. Time and energy is probably the most important thing for us in the modern fast pace life. I aim to make the users feel like they can easily manage to use the apps/websites.

Technology has become the most influential thing in modern life. But as an end-user myself, whenever I start to use a new app or explore new functions, I easily get lost in finding the right button to click. And I can’t remember how many times Brandeis’s school Latte website frustrated me when I want to log in, submit homework, or check my student ID…my needs are so simple, why do I need so many clicks and maybe even calling myself? Therefore, I am here, I want to make the experience for users better. I want to keep my design clean and simple to increase the flexibility and efficiency of the user experience.

During my undergraduate time at Brandeis, I major in Anthropology and International Global Studies, minor in Philosophy. Anthropology teaches me how to do professional ethnographies and qualitative researches, how to discover problems, and how to think from others’ perspectives. International Global Studies and my own international background teach me how social, cultural, the political background could affect how people think and behave. Philosophy helps me to be a constant thinker and teaches me to do logical problem-solving. (I love Camus’s story of Sisyphus the most, “One must imagine Sisyphus happy” is my favorite quote.) And although I do not major in design or art, I keep drawing/painting/writing novels as my amateur hobbies. I like the process of creating.

I worked for Sonic+ as a UX designer(intern) from 2020.11 to 2021.5. I work with my UX manager and we designed the new main pages and new navigation logic for Sonic +, the new logic for the app includes new services added to Sonic+ while at the same making the new logic easy to learn for our old customers. We also designed the new Sonic+ website, the “reward” system, and the restaurant app. I worked independently on most banners and advertisement designs. During my stay at Sonic, the downloads of the app and purchases inside the app increased a lot.

After roughly 1 year of work in the UX field, I went back to academia because of my on-going passion in humanities. Right now I am in my MPhil second year at the University of Oxford. I enjoy the time of managing research and fieldwork, studying, intensive reading and writing, looking at the world from anthropology’s perspectives to try to question more ‘taking- for granted’ rules.