On How I Began

Over time, design has come to play a more and more important role in my life. From the moment I first came across industrial design while choosing my undergraduate major, some part of me knew I'd spend my life doing it.

I've always liked wandering into unfamiliar fields and seeing what ideas they spark. I loved art and had been drawing since I was a child, though I'd never gone especially deep into any one form of it. Math was a nightmare for me, though I could get decent grades if I put in the work. So I thought design might be a middle ground where I could draw on both of my strengths. In a word, design adopted me, and we suit each other, at least in my opinion.

Then I put industrial design down as my first choice, and luckily, I got into Xi'an Jiaotong University with the highest score among applicants from my province for that major.

However, my first year there wasn’t as successful as I’d expected. Or I could just say I struggled a bit.

When I first stepped into a design class, I loved it. But I soon stopped to ask myself two questions.

Was this what design really was? How did I know I wouldn’t love something I’d never tried?

So in my first year, I spent some of my time taking courses in other fields as well, such as medical physics, biomedical engineering, and neuroscience. Eventually, I realized that I could study other subjects, but what I really loved was the design side of them. From then on, I decided to stick with design, especially multidisciplinary design, to make the most of my talents and follow my interests.

But this path wasn’t easy, and that’s why I said I struggled. I didn’t think my first-year grades were good enough, even though I ranked 12th out of 120. When you want to work with other people, grades are often the clearest and most widely accepted way to show that you’re a good student.

In my second year, I put more of my energy into coursework. And frankly, there was a bit of Benthamism in that decision. Of course, I knew that getting a high GPA and pursuing the work I cared about wouldn’t necessarily take me to the same destination, but it was the easiest way I knew to do well at the time. Sometimes I felt at sea. Maybe these were what people call the Odyssey years. I went with the current and kept paddling as hard as I could, whether or not the shore ahead would turn out to be home.

And at the end of April 2026, I met Bobby. He was a PhD student at Politecnico di Milano who had studied design as both an undergraduate and a master’s student and was now doing multidisciplinary research. He found me after class and told me that he and Valentina (his supervisor) could see my passion for design, and that I could become a good researcher. It felt unfamiliar to receive encouragement and recognition for following a path I believed was right for me. Education is about lighting a fire rather than filling a bucket with water. He lit that fire for me, and we started working together. It was my first time doing design research. Luckily, it wasn’t too late. There are many stories about the two of us, but I’ll leave them for another time. After that, I gradually found my rhythm, both in design and in research. At the end of my second year, I also received the National Scholarship, something I’d once dreamed of…

“Good things take time.” That’s the message Bobby left me with, and I still say it to myself when I’m struggling. If you’re feeling struggling right now, I’d like to pass those words on to you, too.