Q: Mic-check, mic-check….Okay, I think we are good to go! Thanks for listening to UX Cafe and today we have our guest, Zhengke… god I am sorry if I just butchered your name. Can you tell me how to pronounce it?

A: Oh you’re fine, I know it’s hard to tell. I am Zhengke, “Jen-ka”. Yup, you got it! I go by Chinese grammar in which last name follows family name. You can also call me Jenks! I go by both.

Q:Thank you Zhengke! And thanks again for joining our UX 10-min cafe today. Can you tell us a little bit about yourself?

A: Sure~ Hi, I’m Zhengke, currently a UX Researcher in the steel city, Pittsburgh. I’ve been having a blast exploring the UX field for 4 years starting from my Master’s in Product & Service Innovation at Carnegie Mellon. Previously I studied Applied Statistics and had experiences in business development and marketing strategy.

Before Pittsburgh, I lived in Nanchang and Shanghai. But I call Chengdu home. It’s not an advertisement on purpose. But if you haven’t been to Chengdu before, I strongly encourage you to do so. It has civilization history of over 4000 years and it has the best nature in the country. It’s also famous for Sichuan cuisine, hot pot and PANDA! All the pandas around the world are actually from Chengdu, Sichuan.

Growing up there, I am a fan of city history and I enjoy travel to experience different cultures. I absolutely love being in the nature. Well, I guess I am more of a mountain person comparing to those who love sea. I love spicy food and cooking. I am also proud of our Sichuanese dialect.

Q: Woo that sounds interesting. Chengdu is now on my checklist! You mentioned that you studied statistics before. Why and how you switched to UX?

A: At the end of college, I didn’t see myself working as a Data Scientist/ Analyst. I mean I love what I learned. But I know I want to work more creatively. Like, except for spreadsheets and reports, I want to participate in ideation to give shape to the solution, whether it is tangible or intangible.

That’s why I came for my Master’s. I’m grateful to learn human-centered design and creative problem-solving approach with amazing peers and companies. About six months into the program, I was pretty sure that I want to be a UXer to create products or services that make people’s lives better. I also appreciate Highmark Health for giving me the opportunity to practice what I learned and continuously challenged me.

A side note: even now I still wear my Applied Statistics hat for quantitative analysis in my work. I didn’t throw away what I learned. It’s a very powerful tool to combine with qualitative research. I’m always seeking more opportunities to apply this skillset.

Q: I see. I am glad to hear that you found your way to UX and you are using your quantitative analysis skills. Without going into details, can you share with us what you enjoy the most about being a UX Researcher?

A: Great question! Well I started as a full-stack UX Designer. But during the first year of my work, I noticed that with the amount of work my team had, there was no space for research. Thus we found it hard to articulate our works and decisions. So I started to invest more time in research on my projects and built cases to convince people that research can bring in tremendous amount of value. Knowing that I am the pioneer and have great passion for research, my team made me the research lead in my team in 2019.

So being a UX Researcher, let me refer this quote from Julie Zhuo, a former Product Design VP at FB: “Diagnose with data, treat with design”. I enjoy how we can explore for opportunities and diagnose the problems with research. On the other side, I also love how research empowers not only designers, but also strategists, PMs and even leadership to communicate and back their decisions.

From a more personal perspective, I love getting lost and bringing people together. My excitement and curiosity generally exceeds my nervousness when facing a new and strange topic, method, or environment. That powers me to go dig in, learn new stuff, and find ways out. Through research and sharing my insights, I am continuously learning about empathy — I know that’s a very overly-used term, but I can’t find a better replacement. This organically enables me to bring people together to solve problem.

Q: Thanks for sharing your learnings! Now before we end, can you tell us any guidelines or principles you live by?

A: That’s hard. There are so many of them. On the top of my head, it would be “learning by doing, do to prove”. Yep, I added the second half and I believe it’s pretty self-explanatory.

As for principles, I would say always have the golden triangle in your mind: customer, technology, and business. The more experienced we are, the more mature we will be with finding the balance and making the trade-offs between these three. I am still on my journey to practice this skill more. So I will just end it here and I am looking forward to sharing more, maybe in my next visit to UX Cafe:)

Q: Definitely! We would love to have you join us again soon.