Á: Could you explain what a UX engineer is for those who are unfamiliar with the role?

MA: A UX engineer stands for user experience engineer. It’s a bit of a niche role. Essentially, my role is to weave together my design skills and my technical software engineering skills. My job is to bridge the communication gap between designers and engineers to build online experiences and tools. I try and make the best user experience that I can, so a lot of my day-to-day work includes prototyping, software development and talking to designers. My job is to bring ideas to life by testing and iterating on top of those ideas before the full-fledged product is built out. It’s important for me to step in early into the design process and see if something can actually work before we spend a large amount of time trying to build it, when it’s not actually feasible. I essentially make design concepts feel real enough for the designer to be sure they want to go ahead with it. It’s really about bridging those two worlds, because designers won’t usually have the technical understanding to know if the designs are feasible to build. On the other side of it, engineers also aren’t usually as attentive to the details that designers put into their work. So it’s important to have someone in between who understands those two worlds.

Á: Do you have an example of something you would produce in your role?

MA: A project I’m working on right now is building a generative pattern tool. At YouTube specifically, we have a set of general visual guidelines that we distribute within the company, to ensure that all of the different artists and designers creating for YouTube are creating art and designs that feel like YouTube. Essentially, to make sure there is a unified visual language. I’m working with some illustrators at the moment to translate the design rules in their minds into computer code. I’m trying to take that discernment that the illustrator has about what shapes fit where, and turn it into a recipe to generate the design again while keeping it aligned with the brand.

Á: Tell us a little bit more about your personal practice.

MA: I would describe my personal artwork as new media art. New media art essentially refers to contemporary art that is made using new technology. That includes digital art, interactive art, virtual reality (VR) etc. It’s taking new technology and using it for creative application. I think a lot of my work stems from me having a lot of different interests – I always had a lot of hobbies growing up. I think I’ve been really inspired over the last couple of years, especially after spending a lot of time at home during the pandemic, to pick up new things and see where I can combine them and connect the dots. Combining the two worlds of technology and art really challenges my perception of what creativity is. There are so many connections between natural arts/sciences and algorithms. The design behind a lot of Artificial intelligence (AI) algorithms is inspired by natural patterns of thinking and how our brains are wired. I like finding those connections and using them for creative expression. I have always viewed art as a living organism. People naturally interpret art in their own way and with the new technology, the art can live. A lot of that involves taking different inputs, doing algorithmic things and producing an output. Each new interaction can change the way that people interpret the art. It’s exciting to see.

Á: How did you get into new media art?

MA: There is a big ‘maker culture’ community on YouTube, where people are designing, coding and building things to make life easier. Gadgets and things like that. I would watch a lot of YouTube videos on design processes and get inspired by how the creators translate their ideas into real life.

Á: Could you describe the process of creating your art, from the initial idea to the end product?

MA: A lot of my work is iterative. For example, I recently made one of my paintings into a musical instrument. I started that project over a year ago and only finished it this year. I first found out about the paint that conducts electricity back in early 2020 and was really excited by it, but didn’t do anything with the materials for a while. I had the interface (or painting) that I built but I didn’t have a full idea of what it would do. A year later I started learning how to code my own synthesizer and thought it would be cool to incorporate that into my painting. I guess in a way that is my process, starting some things and then leaving them for months because I’m interested in something else. That allows me to find the connections I mentioned earlier and means that I don’t have to have a complete idea in my mind before I begin creating. Also, the essence of coded art is sitting at a computer for extended amounts of time and focusing in. My art requires me to code it, debug it, do some research, code some more etc. This can be really draining and mentally exhausting sometimes, so having those breaks within projects is beneficial. I would say that it’s not like painting for example, where I could flow and be guided by my paint brush when painting abstract art. Coding is very particular in that I could have character wrong and it would mess up the whole design. It’s so detail oriented that I have to go through the code line by line and step by step to understand what went wrong or why I’m not getting the desired output.

Á: How did you get your UX engineering role at YouTube/Google?

MA: My introduction to coding was in college when I took a coding class in my first year. I’m grateful for my university experience because it gave me the structure I needed to develop. I majored in computer science and minored in graphic design. At the time though, those two worlds were very separate for me. I did separate software engineering internships and graphic design internships but there was no intersection between the two. I didn’t know about UX engineering until I got my job at Google. I started at Google as a software engineer and was in that role for about a year. I learned about UX engineering during that time and decided that it aligned more with what I wanted to do. I realised that I liked being involved in what products look like, how they are designed and how people interact with them. I am really interested in that human-computer interaction rather than solely the technical job of implementation, so I knew it would be right for me to change. I am so much happier in this role. I feel like I’m using my full skill set, both creative and technical.   

Á: What do you enjoy about working in tech?

MA: You have to constantly learn and research because you are always being pushed to understand new developments in the field. It drives me to be better and grow as an artist and engineer. It tests my limits.

Á: Was working in a big tech company like Google always an attainable aspiration for you?

MA: In all honesty, it wasn’t an aspiration for me because of imposter syndrome. I had decided because I hadn’t been coding since I was 12 years old or something, that it probably wasn’t a space I could aim for. I used to put myself down so easily. I think what really picked my confidence up was taking smaller opportunities. I did a lot in college, for example, I worked in an all-girls tech camp teaching coding, I led an after-school program and started working at all of these smaller internships and jobs on campus. I was building my resume, growing my skill set and getting involved in my community. I wasn’t actually thinking of those bigger spaces because I was intimidated by them. But I found that as I did more, I grew in confidence. So I started sharing what I was doing on LinkedIn, which led to me being approached by a recruiter from Google.

Á: Is there scope for you be in another role within engineering in the future?

MA: I could switch to something else if I wanted to. UX engineering combines design and engineering, so I still code every day and could move back into a pure software engineering role if I wanted to. Combining the worlds is what I’m interested in though, so if I wanted to move roles, I think I would shift to something more like industrial design. The hybrid role I’m in now gives me the skill sets to transfer to many different industries.

Á: What change would you like to see within the tech industry?

MA: I would say a lot of the conversations around diversity in tech are centred on representation, which is important, but it can be kind of distracting. Solely focusing on representation can distract companies from finding solutions to systemic problems. The question in my head is, are the products we’re building actually helping the people we need to help? In general, we’re building things for mainly capitalistic reasons rather than to move society forward as a whole. The focus is on things like, how can we help this middle class person get food quicker. There are not many things being developed to deal with racism and other types of discrimination or to help underrepresented groups get access to the things they need.

Á: What’s the most complex piece of art you’ve created?

MA: I would say my interactive art installation, I See Therefore I am, that was exhibited at the Gray Area Artist Spring 2022 Showcase in San Francisco. The installation combined different mediums such as analogue video, with more generative art using the inputs from webcams, physical sensors, etc. I had to use three computers, three projectors, four cameras, and one TV. There were lots of different things that interconnected.

Á: Are there any particular engineers you look up to?

MA: Ari Melenciano, a creative technologist. She founded a platform called Afrotectopia, which teaches and facilitates new media art through a Black and afrocentric lens.

Á: Who are your favourite artists?

MA: Virgil Abloh really inspired me, particularly regarding interdisciplinary art. He started as an engineer, then moved to architecture and then into fashion. It was amazing how he connected different industries. Another artist is Nam June Paik, who was essentially the founder of video art. He did a lot of work with television and cameras and how we interact with them. It’s inspiring what he was able to make with limited technology. Jade Purple Brown is also an artist I admire. Her illustrations have fun shapes, beautiful color palettes and centers Black women.

Á: What other creative interests do you have?

MA: I really enjoy music, I played guitar and piano growing up. I still enjoy playing and I am quite interested in music engineering. I also really enjoy film photography.

Á: What do you do outside of work?

MA: I enjoy playing bass, skateboarding, spending time in nature, live music and working on DIY projects.

Á: What advice would you give to your 16-year-old self?

MA: I would say to be more confident and bold. Be more open about what I’m interested in and what I enjoy.

Á: What do you want to achieve in the future?

MA: I want to create more and build experiences that are fuelled by tech although not focused solely on tech. I want to experiment more with my creative expression through all the different mediums I’m learning and step into different industries like music, art, and fashion. I really want to get into audio reactive video art because I love live music.

Á: Any final words for our audience?

MA: Stay curious and keep pushing yourself to learn.