Hello! I’m Hunter Harrison.
This is my story of how I stumbled into UX/UI Design.
I’ve always loved to exercise both the creative and analytical mind. Because of this, I played music professionally and worked for a guitar pedal business.
As you might have guessed, playing music focuses on creativity. Your goal is to create the right sound and musical parts through your instrument that will mesh with a band while serving the artist’s vision for a song or performance. Playing music is a team effort rooted in a creative vision extending past your personal preferences. What you bring to the table is valuable, however, you also have to be ready to receive feedback and adjust quickly. This is where I discovered my first common point between music and UX/UI - which is creating, receiving feedback, and coming back to the table with a new idea.
Creativity was not only a passion of mine, but I was equally passionate about exercising the analytical mind in my work. This is where I found myself working for a guitar pedal business. Here the company focused on building products for guitarists. Our goal was to build products that met the needs of guitar players searching for that next piece of gear to help the guitar sound better. A lot of thought was put into creating these products. The product itself had to work in a professional setting, be robust, create the right sound, and it had to fit the branding of our targeted audience and users. This required the guitar pedal company to go through a design process of research, ideation, prototyping, testing, user feedback, revisions, and iterations, and eventually, the final product would be released to the public. This is where I found my second common point with UX/UI - a design process.
Over the course of a few years, I arrived at a point where I was ready for change, new experiences, and personal growth, and expanded my viewpoint beyond the industry I was so familiar with. I sought out a new career that would allow me to continue being creative and analytical. After doing some research and talking with colleagues, I found myself pursuing UX/UI!
