Design Strategist. A wild duck who always fly high.
Hi there! My name is Julia, and I am a design strategist who draws.
My Story
I grew up in Hong Kong, a very international city where you can find Eastern and Western culture melted from both sides, especially food. I spent most of my time in my childhood studying hard under our famous cramming education. Memorizing all the book content and scoring high in examinations are the common goal for Hong Kong students.
Yet besides studies, I was fortunate to explore the arts of ancient Chinese literature, ballet, and music, where I play piano and percussion in my leisure time.
All…
“I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.” — Thomas Edison
When I was in kindergarten, my teacher told us that 1 plus 1 equals 2 — the fundamental question in the mathematics world. I was curious, so I asked her to explain why the answer has to be 2.
“It is the core of maths. Defined by some very smart people a long time ago.” The teacher said.
“But why couldn’t it be 5, apple, or the cute rabbit in my home?”
“It can’t be. It can only be 2.” She started to become a bit impatient.
I didn’t understand why 1 plus 1 must equal 2. I had no…
Studies found if the hosts utilize meetings appropriately, they can reduce the time spent in meetings by 25%, translating into huge savings.
Like many of you, I lost track of time spent in virtual meetings this year. Thousands of hours are spent online, connecting with clients and teammates across timezone. There are often some meetings showing up in our calendar that we are unsure why we are invited in the first place or what the group would like to achieve in the 60 minutes.
Until recently, while I have started working with a senior manager (let’s call him Scott) remotely, I observed how a meeting host could boost efficiency by structuring a conversation within an hour. …
Get rid of obsolete photos and files. Keep your device light.
Check your phone now. How many photos you currently have on it? Then — how many of them would you like to bring along with your life?
Like many others, I keep loads of photos on my mobile. Thanks to the generous phone storage, I never need to declutter my mess and so used to allow my photo album to grow infinitely.
Until one day, my phone alerted me about hitting the repository’s maximum. I had no choice but to transfer all the photos to the external hard disk.
Ironic as it may seem, while I was looking through my…
It is way more than a checklist item in the Design Thinking approach
Persona is an essential tool when Design Thinking becomes a rock star in the business world. As Interaction Design Foundation introduced, “Personas are fictional characters, which you create based upon your research in order to represent the different user types that might use your service, product, site, or brand in a similar way.” By visualizing each user group’s summary based on the insights derived from research synthesis, the team emphasizes the users’ needs and wants, thus developing something meaningful for them. …
Should it really be the ultimate pursuit in life?
Eight years ago, I started working as a consultant in the technology industry. In my first week, some of my colleagues were saying that “Forget about work-life balance. In here, we do work-life integration.” I freaked out when I heard this for the first time. It felt like I needed to devote my entire life to a company, a project, or a client. I thought I would no longer have the weekend, spending quality time with the people I love, and be able to actually live a life.
After working for a while, I realize that “work-life integration” does not…
11 solutions to bring your iPhone up to speed again
After using my iPhone for 3 years, I notice that it is a lot slower and takes time to load up. Below are 11 resolutions from my research:
My device:
iPhone 7
Version: iOS 14.4.1
# 1 — Restart your iPhone
Like all the other gadgets, this is always the first step.
# 2 — Clear iPhone RAM
iPhone is slow sometimes because it does not have enough RAM to store everything. As such, from time to time, we need to help release it.
If you have a Home button on your iPhone:
- Press and hold the power button until the “slide to power off” option is displayed
- Press and hold the…
Abandoning books is not a crime but may do more good for you
I want to confess here to all the books that I purchased but failed to finish. Books are an art piece on their own since authors put so much effort into them. It is a pity that some of them did not spark joy in me, but I am sure there are other people outside who would find the books inspiring.
Have you ever purchased the book that people highly recommend or the one from the top-selling? You brought it home and started reading it, but you paused after a few pages. …
Apply this strategy when you cannot do random grouping or pre-assign participants into the groups.
Running remote sessions is never a piece of cake and requires much more preparation, especially on technical set-up. In best cases scenario, if you have your participants’ Zoom accounts in hand, you can refer to this guide to pre-assign them into the breakout room before the sessions, then remind everyone to log in with the same email address for the identification.
However, in some scenarios, you might not have your participants’ Zoom accounts. This situation would leave you no other choice but to group people on the spot when people dial-in.
Below I summarised the potentials approach to quickly map…
Try not to bite more than you can chew.
I want to talk about one of the foundations of human — we are all greedy. Time and money — we always want more. I used to fail in the pitfall while running workshops that we included too many exercises and kept pushing the discussion forward just to finish everything on the agenda.
Weird as it may seem, a workshop with a packed schedule may lead to a sense of achievement as if we finish the marathon after a long run. Within 8 hours, we can talk about the past, the now, and the future; We can cover topics in…
Julia Tsoi
Design Strategist in Tech | Ex-IBMer | Apple Developer Academy Alumni. Bird without legs and I would always fly high. https://juliatsoi.com/
