Create serendipity vehicles

14 years ago, I made an infographic on “How To Become President of the United States”. It was for a competition by the US government to educate schoolchildren on the process of getting elected president.

My design won. And I also got $2,500 as prize money.

Winning money was cool, but my design’s impact was more gratifying. My infographic was printed and shipped out to classrooms around the nation. I’d like to think it helped kids understand their government better and inspires them to effect positive change in the future. Making an impact at scale is why I love creating things.

This infographic is still making rounds on the internet. A friend texted me a reddit link to the poster last month that had over a thousand upvotes (and a lot of comments about how this poster is missing the 💰💰💰 involved in our elections lol).

I started writing and creating after a very long break (10 years) because I forgot about the power of putting stuff out on the internet. It unlocks opportunities. The things I share are serendipity vehicles.

I love telling the story of how I got in UX design: I started creating infographics after being inspired by Randall Munroe’s movie timelines (xkcd). My infographic about Inception went viral. It even got a retweet from Joseph Gordon Levitt. And it eventually put me on the path to become a product designer via data visualization.

Keep putting your work out there, you never know what opportunities they may unlock.