Kipaya Kapiga is this month’s Creative Mornings MugShot! Kipaya is an Austin-based UX designer, storyteller, swing dancer, hot sauce collector, aspiring occultist, and occasional raffle contest winner. When he’s not designing and writing, you can usually find him dancing, reading, or playing board games.
What’s one thing you’ve been inspired by lately?
I went to the Design Jam in May hosted by Social Good.us and the topic was Solving for Homelessness, specifically, developing temporary storage solutions for the homeless. We were split up into five groups and went around with stickies and markers generating ideas in areas like cost, ownership, physical features, etc. The facilitators really pushed us to think about how our ideas could meet real needs and help our users. It was great to get together and be with other designer and design-curious people.
Something that stood out to me was that some people who were writing and putting up as many ideas as they could think of and then there were people who were much more deliberative and have longer conversations, and despite the different approaches, you could see how they came to some really interesting conclusions. When I went into it, I didn’t realize what a big deal it was for people experiencing homelessness to have a place for their stuff, but it affects how you can move around and what you can do like applying for jobs or keeping documents safe.
What’s one way you feel like you’re weird and how does that inspire you?
I would wager that I’m the only Kipaya in Texas and I’ve gone through phases where I’m happy to have an uncommon name and appreciate the interest other people show in it and me. But there have also been times when I just go by Kip to make it easier and avoid that conversation completely. It gets really tiring keep hearing “where are you from?” and “what does it mean?” and “how do you pronounce it?” But I’m feeling pretty good about it these days. I’ve found a way to have some fun with it because now I tell people who are worried about mispronouncing it to just think of a papaya. I like to riff on it and say it sounds similar to papaya and, you know, it has a good mouthfeel and is equally refreshing. I think I’m inspired by it because it’s taught me that you can always find common ground when explaining something and have a little fun with it.
Where do you go to get inspired?
It might be kind of cliche, but I watch movies. I really enjoy stories and in a lot of ways, UX design is about stories. Stories that organizations and companies tell themselves and others about the good they’re doing and what they offer the world and the people who come to them and what they need. For any organization, there’s always some story arc of someone needing help with a certain area of his life and then this company helps him and, in the end, he’s better educated and better off than he was before. Besides the storytelling, movies are really interesting visually from their lighting choices to their costume choices to their title credits. I really like horror movies, but those might be more inspiration of what not to do. But that’s what makes them so great at defying conventions and surprising audiences.
(Photo by Manny Pandya)
