Cody Kau: Origin

14 Sep 2023

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Early College:

I began my freshman year in 2011 at UH Manoa. I enrolled in the Academy for Creative Media with the intent of pursuing photography and videography. After a few years of taking various classes, I realized I had no idea what I wanted to pursue a career in. I performed poorly in my Spring 2014 semester and decided to take an extended break to figure out what I wanted to do.

The Void:

I spent the years between 2014 and 2022 pursuing hobbies, focusing on the relationship that I was in at the time, and improving myself as a person. I was able to finally leave the food service industry into a brief stint in retail and landed in the position I’m currently in at an office job for the past five years. During the lockdown in 2020 to 2021, I worked remotely and found myself spending a lot more time on the internet.

The Awakening:

In 2021, Crunchyroll changed their website. It was awful and I griped about different ways that would improve it. I felt like they should add a link that would display the current season’s anime and the day and time each anime would release. I found it incredibly frustrating that some anime would take you to a miscellaneous filler season after you finished the most recent episode. I found myself compiling a list of all the ways I would have improved the site and realized that I found something I would enjoy doing as a career. I did a bit of research and realized that I was interested in UX (user experience) and UI (user interface) design. I promptly decided to return to UH Manoa in 2022.

The Present:

I plan on creating a solid foundation of knowledge on the various coding languages and how to implement the ideas I have into reality. I want to be able to utilize various IDEs and languages in developing an intuitive user interface for an enjoyable user experience.