for me. I was always interested in kind of the technical paths, but studying mathematics was really difficult for me. Ah, and so I early on, they started off as in electrical engineering and then realized that I really loved psychology. And so I started studying psychology. Um, and that kind of what really smooth for me I went through. I finished my bachelor, Um, and and kind of more of experimental psychology. And then I learned that there was something called human Factors. Right, which is, um, the study of how humans interact with machines or with devices, computers rather than how they interact with each other. And to me, it became obvious that that's what I need to dio. I mean, so I went on to study human computer interaction that, uh ah, Iowa State University did my masters there, Um, and then, uh, was working doing basic research in King and factors for the Department of Defense for the Navy. Um, and I I loved it, but I needed to be more hands on, and we were doing research to find out what the best solutions were, but not actually carrying out full solutions. And so I switched over to doing more basic you x and you know, hands on design being a practitioner of you X rather than just a researcher.

there's several different kind of responsibilities that fall under U X. Um, so with within you ex specifically, there are people that kind of come from an engineering background. You might have fun and developers that are interested in learning a little bit more about how people interact with this offer that the building so they start to go more towards a new extra. Ouch. You have researchers that are more kind of look at it from, uh, from a basic researcher of ethnographic type of approach of Howard people interacting using, growing with with tools over time on then kind of the third, uh uh, directions more of the design. Um, so you might have people to come from a design back on the coming to you X. Each one of these is a total valid option. Is a total college way to come into you x. But it's important that any one of those kind of open up their minds to step outside of their comfort zone and to do things that kind of fit within those other verticals so that they can become really successful inside of you. X, which is you. Maybe you may have a talent or a knack for it. But you have to be willing to kind of step outside of of your comfort zone and explore those other options to really feel like you know what you're doing as far as, uh uh, So I do a lot of you more, more currently, I'm doing a lot of consulting on. I consult for three different companies. Andi, I've been working from home for the last seven years. It it's in a lot of ways. It kind of frees you up to do the things that you want to dio and separate out when you want to work for these companies. But at the same time, it could be very easy to lose track of time to go all work on this tomorrow and then tomorrow doesn't work. I will look on it the next day so it could be very very. You have to really know how and be could at scheduling at your time being committed to doing that time. There's no one sitting over your shoulder watching you

So it's a pretty broad question from from a design perspective, there's lots of tools that are used and really depending on where in the new X process you're sitting. Uh, you know, there's the tool list keeps on expanding, but from a design perspective, there's popular tools like Sketch Sigma X'd. Ah, you know that there's a litany of tool framer Andi each one of them are good. And there used to be also on top of all these tools, prototyping tools that kind of start at another level that integrated. And you could then, you know, design and prototype. But, um, those tools are kind of starting to emerge a little bit. And so you're seeing It used to be that you have thes tools that were very, very specific in there and what they did, and they kind of went deep, but they weren't very broad. Now are tools are becoming broader and they still kind of maintain some of this very, uh uh, the specific capabilities that make them useful assed faras models, algorithms, languages it doesn't really like. That's just the mode of implementation, so it doesn't really matter. You can with you can really implement you at Could you x with any language? Andi. The models and algorithms don't really apply because we're let's of, ah, hard science, more of a soft science.