Hi ᵕ̈

I’m Isabel An—an aspiring design/UX researcher.

With an educational background in anthropology and experience in the nonprofit sector, I have developed a critical, people-centered mindset—grounded in empathy, advocacy, and systems thinking—that I now bring to every design and research challenge.

I have a wide breadth of experience understanding and centering people’s needs, having . . .

  • Coached adult immigrants in Chicago to help them secure employment;

  • Taught a diverse group of middle school students in an enrichment summer program;

  • Facilitated town halls around gentrification as an organizer in my home community of Chinatown Chicago;

  • Gathered stories from jail detainees on inhumane conditions for a class action lawsuit filed by a criminal justice organization;

  • Produced a webinar series on arts integration strategies in K-12 lessons for the Smithsonian Institution; and

  • Worked on environmental justice court cases representing affected communities seeking to strengthen federal regulations on toxic chemicals.

For more information, please see my resume.

Education & Academic Projects

I graduated from Washington University in St. Louis in 2021, with a B.A. in Anthropology and minors in Writing and Computer Science.

With a multidisciplinary education, I bring a human-centered lens to understanding behavior, storytelling, and systems.

Through my coursework, I have . . .

  • Designed a qualitative research project during a semester studying in Samoa on societal perceptions of contemporary Chinese migrants;

  • Designed a qualitative research project on the impact of COVID-19 protocols on the social lives of first-year students on campus;

  • Investigated through firsthand accounts and wrote an article on the experiences of young adults engaging in transactional relationships—commonly known as “sugar babies”—in which companionship is exchanged for financial or material support; and

  • Designed, coded, and user tested a prototype social fitness app.