Ashley Fan

I attribute my success to three main factors. First, having really high execution and bias for action - I do a lot and I don't overthink things. Second is reflection. Every time I post a video or I've done something, I always reflect on what I have done good on and what I've not done good on. That's the only way I'm able to grow from my failures. I never really dwell on the fallbacks I had before because I know everyone starts as a beginner and everyone makes mistakes. The only way to improve yourself is to actually acknowledge the parts that you lack and actually act on them. Third, I'm really good at receiving feedback. When others give me feedback, I rarely go against them because I listen to others' feedback and I absorb them. I always say my personality is more like a Plato - people give me advice and I absorb them, and I kind of shape myself into certain different personalities in different environments. I think these three factors kind of attribute to what I currently achieve now.

The best career advice I've received is to really know the current market and understand what exactly is going on, and then learn from it. A lot of people would say coffee chatting and trying to reach out to other people, but because the current market is not that great, I would say the best thing you can do is to actually learn the newest skills. For example, in UX design, the current trend is involving AI in your design skills - incorporating Vibe Code, incorporating Claude, understanding how you're utilizing AI in the process of UX design. Having those put into your portfolio is really key because it tells the recruiters that you are actually learning the newest technology and the newest skills. Same for my other vlog - at that time when I posted videos, that platform really valued video formats over image format posts, so videos got a lot of views. I think one of the great pieces of advice was to really know the current market and what exactly is going on, so in terms of UX, it's getting AI into your process, getting AI into your portfolio. For influencers, you've got to understand what the current market is like to be able to catch up.

I would say just be brave. Bravery is a really great personality for a woman. There are a lot of expectations around women and different boundaries that women face, but being able to start over, having the bravery to realize that this doesn't work out and start over, having the bravery to begin something new, going to a different country, starting a new hobby, switching to a different job - these all begin with just one step forward. I guess that kind of ties to being a 'do actions before you even think' kind of person. It's a mixture of both bravery and action.

One of the biggest challenges I have currently in my company is that it's a really ambiguous space right now because we're transitioning from a traditional UI space to an AI space. The challenge is that the scope for a lot of our projects are really ambiguous, and some of our PMs don't know the direction. Everyone is just kind of doing their own thing and not really aligning on a single direction. But at the same time, this new AI component that we're building, we all know it's going to benefit our internal users, our managers, our employees. This is also a great opportunity for me to design for AI experience, in terms of chatting experience or having the full immersed experience. So these are some of the great pullbacks and opportunities in my current job.

I guess the most important value is 'do before you think.' A lot of times, I don't overthink about things that I want to do. For example, with that vlogging channel that I do, a lot of my friends and people are kind of scared to post videos online because they think their friends or family are going to see and they get shy or embarrassed. But when I post my videos, I never thought about this because I just don't really think about them - I just do it. I think a very key value in my entire life is action. Really act on those actions before your brain starts to overthink, because once you start to overthink, you probably don't have the momentum to keep that action going.