My Persona

I was born in New York City in 1989. My parents are immigrants from Taiwan. They were married in their early twenties there before moving to New York City for my father’s doctorate degree. He received his Ph.D. in Material Science from Columbia University. He accepted a job at Motorola in Austin, Texas, where we moved to when I was about three years old. I grew up in a suburban, middle-class home in Austin until I moved to Japan at age twelve and lived there for two years. After that, I moved to San Jose, California and lived there for one year, my first year of high school. I spent the rest of my high school years in Austin, where we moved back to. I have experienced going to a wide range of high schools with different demographics. I have experienced a Japanese school, an ethnic Asian majority high school in California, and an overwhelmingly White high school in Austin. I like to think I have a more culturally and experientially diverse background than most people.

I am now 21 years old. While I did work minimum-wage type jobs at Randall’s grocery store and Blockbuster Video in my high school years, I currently have no income. I am instead focusing on being a full-time student. However, I do work internship-type jobs during the summer break which usually pay about minimum-wage or slightly more.

I am currently in my fourth year of college at the University of Texas at Austin. I am an undergraduate majoring in English and Marketing at the McCombs School of Business. I am preparing to enter law school soon after graduation. I am currently renting a house with my friends in North Campus.

Like other personalities my age, you could describe mine as curious, ambitious, yet still generally uncertain. I tend to spend money sparingly. As a consumer, my desires align with many of the “Realities of Today’s Consumers” PowerPoint slide: Desire for value, uniqueness, and convenience. I make strong efforts to search for the best value in the product I purchase. For example, I often search for coupons for restaurants online. I am also concerned with feeling and appearing unique (in a marketer’s words…it sounds funny coming from me). For example I spend money regularly on buying vinyl records to listen to, although this hobby is mostly because I like the sound better, rather than because I want to seem unique. Convenience plays an important role as well. For instance, I will choose restaurants that are close in proximity to my house. Mostly I spend money on restaurants and hobbies. A good amount of my money is spent on my girlfriend of one and a half years, who is also a student at the university.

I don’t consider myself especially active physically, but I do make an effort to visit the gym to play basketball and do some weight training when I have free time. Like many other students, my primary mode of transportation around campus is the bicycle. My most significant hobbies and interests are in music, film, books, web surfing, and the news. My less prominent hobbies are activities like television, live music, and the outdoors.

Like I mentioned, I primarily engage with music through vinyl but I also download digital music very frequently. I have a pair of high end (but still excellent value!) headphones because audio fidelity is important to me. I will mostly buy music at local record shops or conventions, but occasionally online. Also, I primarily discover new music through cutting edge music blogs but also older publications, as well as online recommendations. I will sometimes go see movies at theaters, but only for movies I know are on some level respected or worth seeing (based on word of mouth or critic reviews). Otherwise I will use the Netflix Instant View option (value!) or rent more obscure titles at local video rental stores (uniqueness!).

I have noticed that I am most strongly marketed towards when I engage in certain activities. Most significantly, when I use the internet. As a principle of the “Customer Economy” mentioned in an Impact of Insights slide, new technologies are resulting in customers having and demanding access to more information. I take part in this idea by regularly reading certain sites for information. Austinist, a site covering local news, is one I visit frequently for my need to be constantly consuming information. The site is filled with advertisements targeting the local population, but also the young and hip crowd with disposable incomes. The same idea goes for the music blogs and national news sites that I read.

I think that, in terms of characteristics that I share with most of my peers (or generation?), I enjoy engaging in a kind of consumerism that is more intense than older generations. There seems to be more of an emphasis on owning the trendiest material goods and finding the most high-paying jobs to do so.

I hope this offers some value for a marketer out there!

"The urge for good design is the same urge as the urge to go on living." - Harry Bertoia

Two months ago, soon after an unusually mesmerizing fireworks display at Auditorium Shores had closed with its final shot, I found myself stranded in a sea of mothers, fathers, and children, caked in sweat from the Texas heat with lawn chairs over their shoulders, shuffling to return home. No automobiles were allowed for miles and cell phone connections were jammed. I dispersed slowly along with the stream of other celebrators across the Congress bridge toward the lights of downtown Austin. Wandering among the boutiques and wealthy shoppers with their daughters in Sunday dress, I felt like I was misplaced in another world. And then I found the above quote printed on the glass wall of a design boutique and suddenly I felt reoriented by the truth and simplicity of the designer's message.

It reawakened in me the memories I kept from my two-year adventure in Japan. I arrived as a 12-year old American boy and left with an imprint of a culture with a unique sense of design. I believe the general atmosphere of Japanese design truly embodies Henry Dreyfuss' idea that "if people are made safer, more comfortable, more eager to purchase, more efficient, or just happier, the designer has succeeded." While there are many fascinations in Japan to choose from, when people ask me about the experience, more often than not, I will recall for them the phenomenon that is the Japanese toilet.

Installed in more than 72% of households in Japan (thanks, Wikipedia), it is a toilet that considers more than just the consumer's need to sit and flush. The advanced toilet is equipped with a control pad for its many helpful features. The heating option allows the user to set the warmth of the toilet seat at many different levels, which, speaking from experience, is quite key during harsh winters. Some, though not all toilets, will play soothing music to accompany your business handling and automatically flush after you’re done. The deodorization option will clear the air after use, and the bidet option allows the user to electronically control a jet stream of water that washes and cleans your area after an especially messy session. Although I never personally witnessed the following features, some Japanese toilets boast germ-resistant surfaces, a soft close feature that prevents the slamming of the toilet seat down, air conditioning around the seat for those hot summer days, and sensors that detect when you are facing away to take a seat on the toilet (in which case the toilet lid will automatically open) and when you are facing the toilet (Both the lid and seat are automatically raised).

While the western world may think of using the restroom as a fairly no-nonsense process without room for improvement, Japanese design proves that even a basic toilet can be designed to empower its user, a key principle to keep in mind when considering design ideas. Like other Japanese products, the toilet is designed with the intention of bettering lives, even when consumers don’t realize how their lives could be bettered by a different kind of product. While the selection of the toilet’s features is fairly large, it is presented in a highly user-friendly way. Depending on your needs, the toilet’s features are only a button click away from the seat. The neatly designed control pad fulfills another key design principle – simplicity. Since no individual is excluded from the need to use toilets, it has been imagined with the majority of people in mind, and its widespread use among households is a testament to the fulfilling of this principle. It isn’t difficult to imagine the designers behind this product focusing on the safety, comfort, and happiness of the user while creating what has become a nearly universal household need.

Bertoia’s quote resonated with me especially because I had seen up-close and had my life improved by that very same urge for good design. When I shared this quote with some friends later on, I was met with a great deal of indifference and a few differences of opinion. But, really, if your urge to go on living isn’t motivated by the hope of improving your life or other lives (as it is so in the case of good design), why even bother?