Queer Design Club

My day job is UX design manager and principal product designer; in my off hours I work as a freelance illustrator.

How does being queer inform your work?

UX Design is principally a function of empathy — of anticipating the needs, biases, postures and goals of others and then accommodating those to facilitate a desired outcome. As a queer person, I learned at a very early age to read people, mainly for self-preservation — empathy arose as a way to avoid conflict, and to detect others like me. Along a similar line, growing up on the margins brought me into the company of other marginalized groups, which eroded the idea of a one-size-fits all solution — that's served me very well in my career.

What are your favorite pieces of queer visual culture?

Early queer magazines and publications (as myopic as they were), activist & social ephemera (buttons, posters, matchbooks, etc), Sadao Hasegawa and

Which other queer people inspire you?

Paul Mpagi-Sepuya, Sophia Foster-Dimino, Dean Sameshima, Mark Aguhar, Jess Arendt, Karin Dreijer, Zhala Rifat, Mohammed Fayaz, Ajuan Mance, Jeremy Perkins, Jean Frederic Kone, Xavier Schipani