Designer Profiles: Nathan Gao
Meet Nathan Gao. He is a User Experience Design Lead at TransPerfect. He’s also a volunteer and IxDA NYC member.
Briefly describe your career path, including the reasons behind job changes and shifts.
I've always wanted to work in this world of "holistic design", but years ago it didn't exist unless you were in the right place at the right time, or knew exactly what you were looking for. So I spent quite a bit of time in BI/operations, ironically brushing on the idea of Information Architecture, and when I learned about this "UX" thing, I knew I had to pursue it. Ironically, I think the exposure to un-glamourous number crunching and logistics work taught me the value of helping those stuck with awful tools, and the patience to focus on problem solving in complex spaces.
What excites you about being a designer?
We get to play with information, complex systems, visuals, language, human behavior, motion, invisible things, in exploratory, experimental and helpful ways both strategic and tactical. How many other fields can lay claim to that?
What advice would you give someone starting out in their career today?
I think one of the real understated potentials of design is to push back against entropy. Instead of following the typical cycle of discovery, over-reproduction, and collapse, we can forge new ideas and concepts of how the future could evolve in a more balanced ways previously unimagined.
So the challenge, I think, is to not fall under the pressure of short-term impulses to oversimplify in this ever-more complex world. Instead of the work being about any one vertical of beauty, clarity, cohesion, or helpfulness, it could become a synthesis of all of them. Could design meet it? It's not certain.
Who influenced you to become a designer?
Abby Covert, Christina Wodtke, and Dan Klyn. Saw them talk about UX and Information Architecture together and the rest is history.
What’s your favorite place to escape in NYC?
Wherever people aren't looking.
