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About Grace

Hello! 👋  My name is Grace Lau. I'm a second-generation Asian American, born and raised in Massachusetts, USA. I have since found my home in Greater Los Angeles, California where I live with my husband, son, cat, and parents.

My venture into User Experience began in my high school Chinese language class. This was in the late 1990s and my teacher volun-told me to create a website for the Chinese language class. Armed with a library book on HTML 4.0 and Notepad, I created my first static website and there was no turning back. I was drawn to structural and navigation questions as I built microsites for class. Eventually, I developed my first blog before I learned about blogs. I realized the importance of site structure and taxonomy before I knew the words for them.

If you count those high school years, I've been involved with IA and user experience for over 20 years. But if you don't, it's still a good half of my life. I have been helping non-profits, small businesses, and Fortune 500 corporations to:

  • draft business requirements
  • interview users and stakeholders
  • develop taxonomies for varied users
  • create wireframes for documentation and handoff
  • build prototypes for usability testing

My areas of expertise include information architecture, user research, interaction design, metadata and taxonomy. I’m a sucker for intranets and taxonomies. I’ve worked on desktop, mobile, tablet, and responsive web products.

I'm the one standing in the back holding a mic, wearing a cap, vest, hoodie. This was taken at the first meeting of the San Gabriel Valley UX meetup (March 2019)

5 random things about me

  1. Since university, I've lived in Southern California for more than half my life. I've moved around the Los Angeles area but never close enough to a beach.
  2. My first language is Cantonese, then English, and then I picked up Mandarin Chinese through translating songs and watching dramas from Mainland China and Taiwan. I am most comfortable in Chinglish where I switch between different Chinese dialects and English in a conversation.
  3. My parents owned a Chinese take-out restaurant in Western Massachusetts and I grew up there until high school started. It was called Chef Lau's House in Springfield. Friday special was Chicken Fingers and Pork Fried Rice for $3.00.
  4. My first job was at a pickle factory stuffing pickles in glass jars.
  5. I don't really like boba, but I like Hong Kong milk tea, Vietnamese coffee, Thai tea, and espressos.

Say hello 👋

I’d love to hear from you. You can find me on Twitter, Instagram and LinkedIn.