Home-Bound

How did you get into your line of work?
I’m actually an industrial designer by training. Then, I started a start-up with some of my friends about five years ago. After that, I went into different worlds of design: furniture design, design research, design training, and project management. Along the way, I ended up here.

Are there any designers whose works really inspired you?
Ilse Crawford. Her philosophy is that your heart is where you’re at home, so you should design for spaces to feel like home. Another person is Paco Underhill. What I admire about his work is that he embodies the idea of research by observation. Just a simple change can make a really big difference in businesses.

What’s something you’d like to be good at?
Understanding people, especially their motivations and needs. But more importantly, I’d like to understand my own.

When you were a kid, what to you was the best thing about being a grownup?
I think it was financial freedom and being able to eat whatever I wanted whenever—which is exactly what I do now!

Tell us about your favourite childhood memory:
When I was in Primary 1 or 2, my dad would bring me downstairs to wait for my school bus together every morning. Back then, letterboxes had troughs for people to throw flyers they didn’t want into, so we would take some of these flyers to fold into paper airplanes and compete on whose flew further. He would change things up by adding a new plane feature each time,  like wing tips or a different length of wing span. It was fun to learn and the chilly mornings became less cold because we had to run about playing together.

If you could meet your younger self, what’s one piece of advice you’d give her?
You are enough, and everything will work out.