From Chaos to Innovation: Lessons from a UX Designer’s Seven‑Stage Journey

Part 1: No wasted path, every step counts

Li Yuekui outlines six growth phases. The first, a chaotic period, follows his early success directing the animated feature "Xiao Zhuoma" on CCTV, which left him questioning his direction. The second, a climbing period, sparked his curiosity for hardware design despite limited resources. The third, a difficult learning period, involved intensive study of UI design, user‑interface evaluation, and human‑device interaction. The fourth, a professional rise, focused on improving communication, technical, managerial, and innovative abilities. The fifth, initial management, dealt with leading teams to higher efficiency and quality. The sixth, persistence and transformation, highlighted the parallels between design and management—both require human‑centered rule‑making.

He emphasizes staying true to one’s original passion and maintaining kindness.

Part 2: Understanding users’ hearts to guide them

During his tenure at Tongcheng Travel, Li won first place in a WeChat ad creativity contest. He stresses that compelling stories that resonate emotionally are essential for achieving commercial objectives.

His award‑winning ad used a traditional painting style to link parents’ longing for distant children, turning emotional warmth into a motive to purchase tickets.

Part 3: Cross‑border, deep experience design

User experience design investigates human problems, proposes solutions, and implements them. It is a method that requires practice across diverse fields, enriching the designer’s knowledge base.

Part 4: Spotting pain points, uncovering real needs

Li argues that designers must go beyond basic UX concepts; they need domain expertise, project experience, and business understanding. He stresses that product experience designers must stay one step ahead of users.

He highlights interview techniques to extract genuine needs hidden behind user complaints.

Part 5: UX and commercialization are not contradictory

According to Li, user experience and business goals are not opposing forces but operate at different frequencies; delivering high‑quality experiences naturally leads users to pay for them.

Designers should focus on truly understanding user needs to enable rapid task completion.

Part 6: Ordinary or extraordinary—your choice

Effective UX solutions require coordinated work across multiple links, clear business logic, adherence to Nielsen’s ten usability heuristics, and user validation.

Li recounts a clock design project at Lenovo, where he added a color‑changing wheel to reflect time of day, turning a simple product into an engaging experience.

Part 7: Love your choice, innovation follows naturally

Li’s innovation methodology starts with passion, deep familiarity with goals, and linking individual attributes to generate novel solutions.

He describes a camera‑capture feature that leveraged sensor co‑processors and motion detection to launch the camera instantly, a solution that earned one of his twelve national invention patents.

Expert Q&A

What factors affect team efficiency? Unified cognition, communication ability, and deep professional skills.

Advice for designers with similar career plans? Leverage prior industry experience, set clear personal growth paths—either deepen UX expertise or move into management to translate insights into actionable rules.

How does knowledge stem from life? Passion for life drives continuous learning; real‑world problems become the source of valuable insights.

How to handle UX challenges amid rapid tech change? Gather industry information beyond UX, break design boundaries, and build systematic knowledge to stay prepared.

Views on the 996 work culture? Li sees it as a reflection of national drive and personal responsibility, advocating balance between collective progress and individual well‑being.