#4, The Art of the Invisible: An Interview with UI/UX Designer Ryan Park
Recently, I’ve had the opportunity to interview Mr. Ryan Park, a UI/UX designer whose experience spans South Korea, Singapore, and California. Growing up in South Korea and having the opportunity to receive an English education, I often watched older students struggle to choose between aiming their careers at our native land, a different Asian country, or the United States. But the problem was that the struggle was becoming more of a reality for me as I started high school. Moreover, although I have parents who majored in design, they both decided to veer in a different direction from the orthodox designer’s path. Hence, I was curious to hear from a seasoned designer who possessed the skills to enable him to work all around the globe like a flying squirrel.
To give a brief overview of the field, UI/UX design stands for a combination of the terms User Interface and User Experience. UX design is the process of designing the ‘journey,’ or the experience a user takes to achieve a specific goal. For example, in a food delivery app, a UX designer would decide whether to ask for your address first or show you the food options first to make the experience smoother and increase the likelihood that you will order food through the app. UI design is the interior design to UX design’s blueprint. It focuses on specific visuals like buttons, colors, and layouts, things that a user actually sees on the screen. In some professional environments, such as the ones Mr. Park experienced in Korea 15 years ago, these roles were strictly separated. However, more and more global tech companies are turning towards a system where designers act as “hybrids,’ becoming involved in the entire process from the initial research and blueprint to the final visual design.
Prior to the interview with Mr. Park, I had a mere glimpse of the idea of UI/UX design, as my dad works in a similar field. I deemed User Experience to be a novel concept, especially if it was something that involved plotting the thought process of humans. However, during the conversation with the designer, I learned about a crucial detail I had missed. It was about how much of the work done by a UX designer is actually ‘invisible’ to the end user. While Mr. Park’s background is in Visual Design from Seoul National University, he eventually moved to the U.S. to study User Experience (UX). He recounted that this decision stemmed from the urge to create something lasting that could impact people. In conventional visual design, you often rely on instinct or innate talent to create something beautiful yet quick to be disposed of or forgotten. But UX is different in that it is grounded in theory, research, and observation of human behavior and aims to design the interaction between a user and a product. This requires a heavy investment in research—interviewing users, identifying "pain points," and mapping out every possible flow.
But the irony is that when a designer does their job perfectly, you don't even notice it. You just think, "Of course this button is here". Because the final product feels so natural, people often underestimate the sheer amount of logic and effort that went into the "invisible" front-end work. Yet again, because it is so invisible, the design can have a discreet yet sure influence on the user by affecting human thought and perception.
Due to how design can have such a significant influence on how we live our lives, Mr. Park is incredibly selective about where he applies his talent. He told me that he finds it most rewarding when he can make a user’s daily life smoother and more efficient. This sense of responsibility is why he avoids certain industries like gaming. While others might find it entertaining, he personally feels that "killing time" doesn't provide the kind of positive impact he wants to leave on the world.
Listening to his words, I had to prod and remind myself that just because something feels insignificant or goes unnoticed does not mean it lacks influence or importance. In fact, many of my thoughts, decisions, and habits could be guided silently through the systems and people around me—and in the same way, I could be influencing my environment. In that case, I would have to start building nice attitudes and reflect upon myself so as not to be a negative influence. One example of such invisible influence could be when someone told me that they saw a younger girl I had been speaking with bowing to an adult who passed by, simply because she had seen me bow first. I had influenced the girl to perform a respectful gesture by simply bowing, while being utterly oblivious to it!
If there is another important insight I learned from Mr. Park that could rival the former, it would be about the true definition of success and an ambitious career.
In Korea (it may be a global issue, but especially in our East Asian country with loads of social pressure and the high value placed on ‘title’), there’s a common misconception that if you aren’t ‘climbing up the ladder’ into management in a corporation, you’re standing still. However, Mr. Park deliberately chose to remain an Individual Contributor (IC), focusing on hands-on design rather than team management. In fact, he told his manager plainly that he had no interest in management. “Directly designing with my own hands is what makes me happy,” he explained. While some find fulfillment and the sense of accomplishment in ‘running the household’ of a team, Mr. Park is someone who wants to be a ‘high-level expert’ in his craft.
During a friendly conversation after the interview, he mentioned that he recently started running and even participated in a marathon. For me, this seemed like the perfect metaphor for his career. He never stays idle and continues to strive for improvement, chasing a goal not set by others but by his own values. Even his choice to remain an IC seemed like a challenge, as he would have to constantly evolve to become a “master” of his field. I believe this is also evident in how he chose to study User Experience in graduate school in the US. Even though he graduated from the best university in South Korea and was working a stable job in a major company, Mr. Park chose to take a risk and study again to grow, to communicate better, and so that he could create something lasting and influential.