Brian Zhao
Erin Malone
IXD History
October 13, 2020
Irene Au
Irene Au is an interaction designer, a design partner, a mentor, and a yoga teacher. Au attended the University of South Carolina (USC) from 1990 to 1994, she earned her Bachelor of Science degree in Electrical and Computer Engineering, and Au finished USC without any cost since she won a full scholarship award. Au also attended the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign right after that and Au earned the Master of Science degree in Industrial Engineering/ Human-Computer Interaction major in the year of 1996.
When Au first came out to look for a job, she decided to join Netscape Communications. During 1996 and 1998 Au helped design the browser and mail/news client pages. After that, Au stayed at Yahoo! for the next eight years. Au was the first interaction designer in Yahoo!, and her job was to study and do research for user experience and make developments for the website. In the year of 2002, Au became the VP of user experience and she was managing a team of 150 people at the time, Au later left Yahoo! and joined Google in 2006. Au worked as the Global Head of user experience at Google, she led a team of 250 people which included interaction designers, visual designers, data researchers, and web developers. Her team redesigned the Google site and implemented design principles for Google. After that, Au continued to work in different companies as the leader of different teams.
Irene Au has made some great achievements in her career without questions. What makes her sounds even greater is her mentor identity. As the leader of many designer teams, Au doesn’t just have the charisma and leadership skills but she also has the wisdom and patience to teach new designers. Irene Au made lots of speeches over the years and her speeches were very educational and informative for new designers. She always interviews other experienced designers and summaries their valuable experiences and thoughts from their stories for the audiences.
Au did not come up with anything that is very innovative and she has always been a very humble person, this is probably why she is lesser known compared to other white male designers. But Au indubitably receives respect from countless interaction and visual designers.
Citation
- “Irene Au.” Khosla Ventures, 22 June 2015, www.khoslaventures.com/team/irene-au#:%7E:text=After%20Netscape%2C%20Irene%20joined%20Yahoo,all%20Google%2Dbranded%20products%20worldwide.
- “About.” Irene Au, 19 Aug. 2015, ireneau.com/about.
- “Irene Au Intro.” Linkedin, www.linkedin.com/in/ireneau. Accessed 13 Oct. 2020.
- 99U. “Irene Au: The Architecture of Creative Collaboration.” YouTube, 19 Mar. 2018, www.youtube.com/watch?v=y0rNnnW1PgQ&t=319s.
