Renée Mak

Strategic experience designer Renée Mak brings a powerful mix of strengths to our team: a background in urban planning, passion for EDI and accessibility (and believe us, she practices what she preaches), and a grounded, genuine perspective paired with a fierce work ethic.

Renée’s life as a creative fuels her design practice: she is a professional circus performer, illustrator and artist. She sat down with us to discuss how she discovered, approaches, and sustains her work.

You have such a diverse resume, from design to the creative and performing arts. Do you have an origin story for how you became who you are today?

The purpose of my life is to constantly be creating. And what that looks like can be many different things. I see that in my art and performing arts, but I also see it in the work I do as a designer, where I do a lot of problem solving and creating solutions.

This might have come from feeling like there were some restrictions on creativity growing up, within my culture and also just within the family I grew up in.

Over time, both me and my family have grown and evolved. It’s not like that anymore. But growing up, those restrictions were something that I felt quite heavily. There was a lot of emphasis on more conservative career paths that are perceived as more stable here.

(Photos above: Renée as a child skiing, and with her older sister.)

I started my post-secondary education taking some courses in urban studies, as I had a plan to pursue architecture. It’s not that I was ever interested in buildings – it was a career path that was suggested to me when I was a kid, and I latched onto it. I didn’t even know what urban planning was but I ended up studying it in this space.

It’s almost as if you found a technical and “acceptable” door in urban planning, and from there found a more creative path.

Definitely. And urban planning is a very natural progression into experience design. The things you’re doing are different, but the way that you might approach problem solving is very similar. I went from urban design to graphic design and now, to user experience. This was after slowly realizing I really enjoyed the more strategic side of design.

It sounds like you’ve learned a lot about who you are simply through the process of exploration. How has your conception of yourself changed over time through the work you’ve done?

When I was a kid, before I even understood what kind of industries I might want to go into, I had this image of myself as this high-powered woman in a business suit. The type of business didn’t matter. I would go with my mom to Chinatown in the city I lived in, and see these women and think, “That’s what I want to be.” I saw these women as leaders.

The concept of this high-powered leader in a business suit who commands a room isn’t something I’m attached to anymore at all.

(Photo credit below: Wil Stelfox Photography)

As I started working, and recognized more and more that people are just people, it became more important to me to enjoy the things that I work on and the people that I work with. That means more to me than the traditional definition of status and power.

What attracted you to Domain7?

My move to Domain7 was really intentional. As trite as it might sound, I care about community and I care about the world. What drew me to Domain7 was the portfolio of work it does, its mission statement around creating good technology, and how its approach to transformational design allows organizations to more effectively serve the public.

Sometimes I’m a bit morbid and I think, “If I’m going to die, what are the things I want to be proud of?” I want to be proud of what I’ve accomplished, the experiences I’ve had, and the relationships I’ve made. At Domain7, or at any organization that is very human-based and intentionally chooses work because it aligns with their values, I find that I can build those relationships and achieve at least some of those experiences and accomplishments.

You have a very active creative life, including your work as an illustrator, an artist, and a circus performer. Do you consider all these elements part of your professional life? How do they fit together for you?

I always say I have three streams of work, which would be my design work, my circus work, and my illustration or visual arts work, which is probably the smallest stream. And that’s simply just because time is a real thing.

At a certain point of time, especially as I got more into user experience, I started delineating my circus and more creative self from my design self, and eventually very intentionally separated them completely. I would worry that the circus part of me, “the circus freak,” wasn’t something I wanted attached to my professional identity.

I’m really happy that I made the choices that I made in my life now, that I have these two worlds, because they can complement each other in so many ways.

How did you get started as a circus performer?

I started circus as a way to stay in shape and lose weight. In time it became this completely transformative, empowering journey for me. It’s taken on a life of its own—that’s what I love about it.

For a lot of women in the circus—and in society in general—there’s always a moment in time where the body pressure is really real. And if you can move past it, it can become this transformative piece that makes you realize how strong you are, both physically and mentally. Your mind starts to shift and you realize that you’re able to express your body, soul and strength.

(Photo credit below: Ryan and Amanda Photography)

What are those points of intersection, where you see art, performance, and design come together?

I definitely think human connection is one of them. So is storytelling. And I would say problem solving is one of them, which storytelling can be part of.

To give you an example, I’m writing a show about dismantling anti-Asian racism, exposing some of the anecdotal stories of the Asian diaspora in North America. That storytelling is meant to be an impetus to solve an actual problem that exists: that xenophobia is still alive and very well. We’re telling these stories because something needs to change.

Do you see a storytelling aspect to your design work as well?

Definitely. Storytelling is really effective, especially when I’m working with partners who may not be as oriented to design thinking, or more human-centered thinking. It could be as simple as taking somebody through a journey map of their customer.

Is that part of what makes transformational design so important in your opinion? Its ability to help address those systems?

I think this type of design is important because things just aren’t working. COVID has very clearly highlighted systems that can work well and systems that don’t work well.
It’s important because it actually enables organizations to be effective in the long-term. But it is hard to do. Transformational design is more than just saying, “These are the systems that have to be put in place and these are the processes to facilitate this.” It comes down to people as well: Are they ready for change? Are they capable of the change? There are so many more layers to it than just organizational charts and workflow diagrams.

When I was 12 or 13 years old, my dad had to undergo a minor surgery. I remember coming home from school and my dad had left this note on the kitchen table that he had internal hemorrhaging and he went to the hospital. That was it. But he didn’t indicate which hospital.

My family spent probably two hours calling every hospital in the city trying to figure out where the hell my dad was. It turns out he’d driven himself 40 minutes across the city to a different hospital than the one we lived near.

That experience showed that the systems weren’t in place for the hospitals to communicate with each other. There was no sharing of information.

Fast forward ten years or so later, my sister called me and said, “Someone in the family should know I’m in the ER.” No further information (my family’s really bad at communication). This time, I called one hospital and they immediately were able to figure out where my sister was, connect me to the right hospital and patch me right to her room. It took all of 15 minutes.

That to me shows the power of transformational design, especially in something like the healthcare system, where they’re actively able to serve their public better.

(Photo credits above, from left: Scopo Photography, Wil Stelfox Photography)

Some people try to completely integrate their professional and creative selves, but it sounds like, for you, having both streams allows you to broaden the parts of yourself you’re allowed to cultivate.

I see the value of trying to make a living doing the thing you’re passionate about. But for me, while there are things I can draw from one and apply to the other, it’s not going to be a complete overlap. Circus is just so different from design.

I was talking to a friend recently, who is also an experience designer and illustrator, about creativity, lifestyle and balance. She said, “The lifestyle of a creative is that there is no balance in a traditional sense.”

Traditionally, we think of balance as, “I work this many hours a day, and then I rest this many hours a day, then I exercise this many hours a day…”

It sounds like there’s a bit more of a seasonality to how you approach things, as opposed to maintaining some sort of regimented daily “balance.”

There’s a concept in physical training called periodization that we use in circus. Leading up to a show, for example, you’ll periodize your training to be really specific to that show. After that show, you might periodize your training to rehabilitate your body.

I like to apply that concept to my other work as well. For example, I focus more on circus right now than visual arts, simply because I’m in my 30s. My body is still capable. And when I’m in my 50s and 60s, I will have more time to focus on visual art, because I’ll probably be retiring my circus arts a bit more.

I’m not getting stressed about not finding that balance now, because I know balance will come. It just might be a longer timeline than we think it needs to be.

(Photo credit: Ian Matthews Photography)

It’s the opposite of “hustle culture.”

There’s one thing I always like to impart to younger professionals I mentor…

Of course it’s better to have better-than-baseline competency but you don’t need to be the best in the world. People get really stressed out about everything that they need to learn and all the knowledge that’s out there. It can be overwhelming and people often forget about the other two factors.,

Achievement doesn’t have to be the amount of knowledge you attain, recognition, and awards. It can also be in the relationships that you create with people, and just in showing up.