My name is Jennifer Kim and I am a 4th year student attending University of California – Davis, majoring in Design and Cognitive Science. I decided to pursue user experience design after I took a course that introduced me into UX/UI design. That course was such an important experience because I realized how much I enjoyed designing users' experience for mobile and web devices.

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I began my college career as a design major, thinking that it would be enough to fulfill my curiosity in design. However, as I took more design courses, I realized how important it is to empathize with the audience before beginning any journey as a designer This train of thought led me to search for other majors in UC Davis that would allow me to learn more about how human mind works and how that impacts human's decision making. So, I landed on another field called Cognitive Science.

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Cognitive Science is unfamiliar with many people. Even when I apply to jobs, most of the companies do not have an option of 'cognitive science' that I could indicate as my major. So, to any visitors who are unfamiliar with Cognitive Science, these are some of the things I learned as a Cog Sci major. I learned about brain functions in a neurological level, communication, philosophy, brain and memory, scientific research methods, and more. In other words, it is an interdisciplinary field that combines numerous knowledge that studies from how our brains work to how they are executed as our actions.​

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Although some classes were challenging, I loved learning more about human mind and relating that with design. As I am beginning to move on to my next journey, I hope to keep learning and practicing these knowledge as a UX designer.