Informing my design process with my learnings as an Econ student

My undergrad degree was in Economics — it took me a while to fully understand the importance of the field but I nonetheless became enamored by the field. I was fascinated by macroeconomics, supply & demand, and understanding human decision making as a whole. There were tons of assumptions made and we had to test those assumptions through leveraging statistics. STAT and R were common programs we use to measure correlation, statistical significance, and more! The more I progress in my design career, the more that I realize how much having an Econ background empowers me as a designer. Visuals aside, my background in econ strengthened my research approach and how I make design decisions. In this article, I’ll outline 3 things that having an econ background strengthens my design process.

1. Cultivating Empathy

This is not the same for everyone, but for me personally, I found econ to accelerate my ability to empathize with people. I became enamored by the study of income inequality and the economic development of emerging economies. Poverty alleviation and access to education became areas that I became extremely passionate about. I found it incredibly motivating due to the fact that I was able to see the hard impact of what I was studying. How to we alleviate poverty? How do we enhance a developing country? These were all questions that I became fascinated with and no different than the questions I ask myself when approaching a UX Design challenge.

2. Research!

My research ability is perhaps the most concrete skill that my background in economics empowers me with. I loved doing research — whether it’s examining the nature of a countries development, competitive analysis, or examining trends I loved sifting through data and drawing out key findings. As designer research is a key portion of the design process and a key step before my design process. Any successful design is backed by research and data-guided by user feedback. Having a background in a field such as Economics has allowed me to develop a critically analytical perspective that most other designers don’t have.

3. Perspective!

Studying economics for the most part of 4 years builds a mindset and approach to problem-solving grounded in curiosity. Asking questions was a common practice and the more I studied econ, the more curious I became about it. Behavior Economics was such an eye-opener for me as I realized how much it intertwined with design. Exploring human decision-making and ensure good IA for example were areas that naturally connected the two seemingly divergent fields.

What are your backgrounds? How do they inform your design process? I’d love to increase engagement and hear from you!