By: Elena Mart
Olivia Ya-Han Hsu, renowned for her innovative design philosophy and profound social impact, has made a name for herself as a UX designer. She focuses on how design can improve and shape the infrastructure of contemporary technological society. To her, each project represents an opportunity to drive societal progress and sustainable development through innovation and design.
Ya-Han’s journey in design began with a childhood passion for art and aesthetics. Starting from high school, her deep interest in art and design led her to pursue formal education in the field. Accumulating over a decade of visual arts and design experience in Taiwan, she received numerous design awards and participated in multiple exhibitions.
During her graduate studies at Northwestern University in the United States, where she earned a Master’s degree in Product Design and Development Management, Ya-Han embarked on exploring the realm of technological product design and user experience. She discovered a particular passion for designing in the essential infrastructure industries that affect daily life. From her graduate projects onward, she continually explored using user experience design to address various societal challenges across industries. Over the course of five years, she achieved remarkable milestones in the US design landscape.
For instance, at TAG (The Aspen Group), a leader in the healthcare industry, Ya-Han served as a senior designer, contributing her one-of-its-kind creativity and problem-solving skills to enhance the user experience in the healthcare industry. For example, she streamlined the process of applying for medical loans with a user-friendly and empathy-driven platform, ensuring more patients could access timely dental treatments. Moreover, her interactive Q&A interfaces helped patients make informed decisions about oral health in a more engaging manner. Her redesigned portal websites improved interaction between patients and clinics, facilitating efficient scheduling and tracking of treatment processes, significantly improving the efficiency and quality of healthcare services. Recognized with international design awards, including the UX Design Awards, Ya-Han’s patient-centric design approach sets new standards for the healthcare user experience.
On top of that, Ya-Han has been an influential figure in promoting better design workflows and UX design methodologies in the healthcare industry. She has helped create essential processes, tools, and templates that enhance the overall user experience of Aspen Dental’s products and contributed greatly to its design culture. She has also been a key member in building and enriching Aspen Dental’s design pattern library and has helped standardize its design elements across the entire ecosystem, promoting consistency and ease of use for Aspen Dental’s design elements across platforms and scenarios. Her contribution ensures that the digital tools and interfaces are not only consistent, user-friendly, and cognitively efficient for both patients and dental care providers but easier to design, build and maintain because of the highly modularized and reusable repository of design solutions, setting an example for the entire healthcare industry to follow.
Photo Courtesy: Ya-Han Hsu
Beyond healthcare, Ya-Han is deeply passionate about enhancing efficiency in public sectors such as transportation. For instance, during her tenure at Atom AI, she designed an inventory and work management tool for the US Department of Transportation (DOT). Through intuitive design and optimized user experiences, she improved workflow and real-time tracking of transportation facilities, significantly contributing to the efficiency of maintaining and managing transportation infrastructure and making a notable contribution to improving national public resource management efficiency.
During the project, Ya-Han pushed for technological as well as product experience innovation avidly. By collaborating with the product manager and engineering team to define and co-create industry-leading features, she contributed to the development of ambitious solutions that aim to modernize the national infrastructure with a level of accessibility and usability unseen before. As a designer, Ya-Han brought to the team her unique human-centered perspective and a constant advocation for clarity, simplicity, and delight for the user, which has been immensely valuable for the success of the entire project.
Additionally, while working at the global cyber-security company Keeper Security, Ya-Han set a benchmark in the cybersecurity industry with her user-friendly, efficient, and visually engaging designs. Her visual and feedback-driven interfaces enabled individuals and organizations to manage passwords more effectively, crucial for safeguarding personal data and national cybersecurity. Collaborating across departments, she also redesigned Keeper Security’s website to enhance readability and effectively communicate cybersecurity awareness and education to the public.
As a designer, Ya-Han not only focuses on the functionality and aesthetics of products but also on how design can influence society, driving its development and progress. “Changing behaviors for good, and on a massive scale, is designer’s super power.” Ya-Han believes that, in this hyper-connected and technology-driven society, design will play an increasingly crucial role in shaping the future. Her vision for social impact-driven design goes beyond simply improving efficiency in areas such as urban infrastructure, public transportation systems, and healthcare. Instead, she seeks to create solutions that are smarter, more humanized and more pleasant to use for these fields to ultimately shift people’s behavior, creating long-standing positive social change.
With the acceleration of global urbanization and population growth, Ya-Han believes challenges such as traffic congestion, resource management, and healthcare resource allocation will keep intensifying, which means her responsibility as a UX designer lies in not only solving immediate problems but also creating a more sustainable and equal future for the next generation. By designing smarter, more environmentally friendly, and inclusive solutions, Ya-Han hopes to empower wider groups of people, enhance their quality of life and elevate the overall efficiency as well as sustainability of society.
Looking ahead, Ya-Han aims to continue leveraging her design talent in public sector initiatives. By serving as a catalyst for social change through design, Ya-Han hopes to inspire more designers and technologists to join the effort in addressing significant societal challenges, collectively creating a more prosperous and sustainable future.
Published By: Aize Perez
