About
My name is Angeline Lee, and I'm a London-based designer from Malaysia with an MA in Design Management and a BEng in Product Design Engineering. I'm passionate about improving people's lives through design and creating products and services that empower that change.
Having struggled with my health, I'm interested in projects that enable people to be happier and healthier. A common thread in my projects is capacity-building and self-actualisation, as I seek to build structures that provide opportunities to realise this.
When I'm not working, I enjoy creative activities in my spare time: painting, writing, embroidery, cooking — I appreciate the steady, iterative process of each one!
Design Philosophy
With a unique educational background in STEM and the arts, my approach to delivering universal and inclusive solutions can be illustrated as such:
I drew inspiration from four design paradigms. From outside-in, the first diagram is the "Krebs Cycle of Creativity" by Neri Oxman. This map describes four domains of creative exploration and shows that they are inherently entangled and anti-disciplinary. Likewise, I can't separate my expertise and experiences. They all embody how I solve problems and view the world. The second octagon describes the attributes of a future-facing designer. Inspired by Tom Inns' "Designing for the 21st Century" and my own experiences, I have arranged them accordingly to the four domains of creative exploration. Adding on to the widely recognised skills of creativity, synthesis, and the core technical skills associated with each design discipline, they showcase the transferability of 'design thinking'. The third Venn diagram is IDEO's "Desirability, Feasibility, and Viability" diagram but with a twist. Clive Grinyer proposed the "Purposeful, Ethical and Socially Beneficial" paradigm to reflect what is happening with businesses now. Design has always been about the functional, emotional and social context. It brings together the thinkers of economics, the scientists who shape technology, and the designers who facilitate the creation of desirable, people, and planet-centred options for our future. Lastly, the diagram in the middle shows the top-down, bottom-up approach of co-design, showing that we should always aim to meet each other halfway.
My Values
💜 Lead with Empathy. Central to my approach is designing for autonomy and accessibility. I enjoy using co-design, a practice involving stakeholder input and agency, as establishing these relationships allows me to identify problems more easily and create better ideas.
🌿 Design Responsibly. Innovation can often come at the cost of the planet or societal values, but we should always seek responsible ways to innovate. Using ethical frameworks and circular design to guide my process, I strive to respect the stakeholders and resources I encounter in my design journey.
💡 Creative Doing Over Thinking. As an overthinker (hah), I sometimes get trapped in the spiral of my research in pursuit of the 'perfect' solution. I realised that since embracing uncertainty, my 'incomplete' prototypes were always the iterations that led to finalised concepts. Now, I welcome every opportunity to experiment, even if that means picking up skills on the fly!