i moved away from college and home in southern california a few months ago and these are some snippets of observations, feelings, and appreciations i’ve had since moving here first, the pictures —

My story and some reflections from the heart — i graduated back in march and made an instagram “reel” video, similar to the short-form videos on tiktok. The short-form video was to reflect on my personal college experience as I was making it then share it. this article is “long-form” version of each video section. foreward note: this was…

my personal in-depth one-bag packing list for 2 spring months solo in cities across europe — i lived out of a backpack for two months (mostly) solo across 19 countries. here are some of my reflections about what i brought like favorites, things i wish i had, things i’m glad i didn’t bring, and my personal packing list. i wanted to have only one large backpack…

In DSGN 1, “Design of Everyday Things” at UCSD, one of the assignments was to identify examples of good design in everyday interactions. The StepNPull door opener as an example of good design — it allows one to open doors with their shoe instead of their hand, has a simple…

Newcomers already have a version of design-thinking from previous projects. These projects can be pivoted to design case studies. — I’m a TA for a product design course at my college and gave a lecture on Creating Case Studies from Non-Design Projects. This is an article-ized version of it! This article contains 1) the design thinking framework compared to any project 2) how to turn non-design projects into case studies…

I completed my second Microsoft internship as a Software Engineering (SWE) intern. I wrote a reflection piece for last year’s Explore internship and thought writing one for this year would be fun too. Like last year (see link below), I will be mainly self-reflecting so my experiences might not apply…

One of the habits I picked up in 2020 was to block days with dedicated sessions of work time — no pressure if things take more or less time, simply adjust throughout the day. But the mere act of writing it down gave me a schedule I could follow. When…

Workshop design, virtual platform difficulties, and lessons learned at ScaleSD — Made with 🔬 by Kendall Nakai, Dr. Stephen MacNeil, and Mariam Mustafa Virtual workshops offer the potential to teach new skills at scale, like design. Not everyone has access to design education programs, so we took this opportunity to introduce design through a workshop at ScaleSD, an innovation design challenge…

The technical and personal aspects about what I learned this summer. My heart and mind opened up a lot :-) — This summer I was an Explore intern at Microsoft. The Explore intern role is where a first or second year in college is placed in a “pod” of 2 other Explore interns and together they learn the role of software engineer while rotating through being program manager. In this piece…