I've spent 6+ years in IT infrastructure and 3+ years in design, and the thing that always stuck with me wasn't the technology—it was the people trying to use it. Every ticket, every frustrated user, every workaround was a reminder that the gap between a good tool and a painful one comes down to how well someone understood the person on the other side.

Seeing that up close—applications that worked technically but failed people daily—is what led me to User Centered Design. Not as a pivot, but as an answer to something I'd been sitting with for years. I earned my UX and Visual Design Certificate at the University of Washington, built case studies, and found that the skills sharpened in infrastructure—listening carefully, diagnosing accurately, solving precisely—translated directly into designing experiences that actually work.

User centered design isn't something you add at the end. It's the foundation. And the products that get that right are the ones that genuinely make a difference in how people move through their day.