Meet Skye Lou | Product Designer

We had the good fortune of connecting with Skye Lou and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Skye, how has your work-life balance changed over time?
If you take “balance” in the universal sense (working only during office hours which is almost equal to leisure time) as the standard, then I am not balanced at all. My work and life is completely impossible to separate, and if you ask me what time I get off work, I can barely give you an exact answer.

I am a recently graduated product designer, and I am an international student (as you might have guessed from my terrible English). Such a status means three things. First, design is an industry with no end – it has no standard answers, there is always room for endless improvement, and the time spent may not be equal to the payoff. Five hours of hard thinking during the day may be worse than a three-second burst of inspiration before going to bed. Secondly, just graduated, I was afraid to refuse all the opportunities and accepted all the jobs. At the busiest time, I had three or four cases at the same time. Third, being an international student means that half of my work comes from China, where the time difference is 15 hours. Sometimes I would adjust my sleep time to afternoon LA time in order to communicate with the client to make sure I could participate in the work efficiently in the early morning. This ended up with a lot of friends asking me to hang out at night that I had to turn down. Doesn’t that suck for balance?

But I don’t think ‘balance’ is a simple case of weighing work and life on opposite ends of the scale. One of my favorite scholars, Liu Qing, said, ” Human beings are the purposes, not the tools.” It is true that if people are only tools for development, we will be slaves to reality, slaves to work and profit. But if your purpose and ambition at this stage is closely related to your profession, and your work is part of your life, then I don’t think you are just a “tool” in this job.

Fortunately, it is very difficult for human beings to deceive themselves on this point. Just as an apple tree will not grow oranges no matter what, people will always make honest choices that maximize their psychological benefits. It’s not that I sacrifice fun and food for work, but in my current value system, the satisfaction I get from professional achievement and progress is beyond fun, beyond health, beyond “life”. So I chose to work overtime. In other words, if I was given a job that was light enough and guaranteed my quality of life, I might not be happier than I am now.

At both ends of the scale are not work and life, but what you want and what you are getting. So don’t let the universal standard of “balance” constrain you. ‘working too hard’ or ‘perfectly balance life and work’ are both choices made from your inner value system, only the difference between left and right, not up and down. Unless you already feel the scale is crumbling, but then you won’t last long anyway.

In the universal view, my “balance” is a mess, but for myself, everything is just right.

Alright, so let’s move onto what keeps you busy professionally?
’m a product designer.

Growing up I loved all kinds of things, but my biggest passion is always games and toys, from Transformers that your kids might be interested in, to all kinds of chess that your grandma might be interested in. Sometimes my friends say that they can’t figure out whether I’m 8 or 80 years old. And the reason for that is, I am a mix of logic and imagination. Toys and games are crazy concepts behind the strict rules and settings. This personality leads me to being a designer and also shows in all my design works.

I love finding ways to create magic in my design work, using optical illusions, planting easter eggs in detail, and crafting structures that transform. Throughout the ideation and mock-up process, I explore interactions, discovering how people can experience movement, emotion, illusion and humor. I want to find clever ways to bring my designs to life, creating a sense of magic that we can all share together.

After going through this journey to try stuff and discover myself as well as doing 2 internships in Hasbro, I finally decided that I didn’t want to be just a gamer, instead, I eventually wanted to be a toy and board game designer. As I said, toys and games are basically wild concepts and imagination behind strict rules and laws. And that’s exactly who I am! So why not.

Now I’m working in a Game Company, also work as freelance product designer, as well as a freelance 3D animator. Now I’ve been able to work with many of my lifelong idols in the industry. When I was 12 years old I would never have thought that one day I would be so close to these names. To me, that’s magic.

Any places to eat or things to do that you can share with our readers? If they have a friend visiting town, what are some spots they could take them to?
Hermosa beach, that’s my number 1 beach in LA. Hayden Tract. It’s small but there are a lot of cool architecture. I thought it’s an area for independent studios.

The Shoutout series is all about recognizing that our success and where we are in life is at least somewhat thanks to the efforts, support, mentorship, love and encouragement of others. So is there someone that you want to dedicate your shoutout to?
Thanks for Lulu Tang recommended me to do this interview and also saved me from my overwhelming work for a thousand times.

Website: https://skyedesign.cargo.site/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/skye_xhlou/

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/skye-lou-design/