Phillip Yonekawa-Blest
Academic Experience
As a high school junior, my top major choices were economics and psychology. Then, I heard about behavioral economics. Thinking, Fast and Slow was my first exposure to the field. I decided to minor in psychology while majoring in economics to ensure I was informed from both perspectives concerning human behavior. I completed the leadership studies Honors minor because of its overlap with IO, behavioral economics., and my love for human beings. My experience has confirmed my desire to pursue applying behavioral principles within my UX career.
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Research Experience
The HERE program is a two-week intensive introduction to research led by UH faculty members. Over those two weeks, I contributed slightly over 100 hours to the project. Through the HERE program, I also met the consumer behavior professor I would later conduct research with. The HERE program was my first exposure to conducting literature reviews outside the classroom, and it laid a road for me to conduct more research at UH.
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HERE's impact continued after the program ended. My HERE research topic dealt directly with SDGs, so I used part of the research to contribute to an ESG competition hosted by BNY Mellon. After winning runner-up in the Global Case Competition, we gave the $2,500 grant to a charity that aligned both with our primary project and the HERE research project.
Active 4 the Culture Lab
My research assistantship for Active 4 the Culture allowed me to apply my love for mental health, psychology, social media, and cultural literature to a meaningful research project. I worked on a Meta-funded project researching a myriad of topics including cultural authenticity in ads and social media, analyzed data, and created presentations for findings.
The project designed and tracked the effectiveness of specialized social media content, a digital community support group, and a fitness tracker on movement and mental health. This work was completed under Dr. Johnson within the College of Technology at UH.
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Through the completion of this role, I gained more experience working with a team in the context of impactful, IRB-approved research. Additionally, getting to apply concepts from previous psychology classes and even economics contributed to my confidence in the relevance of my niche intersectionality for future pursuits.
Formative Classroom Experiences
In addition to equipping me with direct and transferable skills, college classrooms were the grounds where I acquired field-specific theory and knowledge that served in further mapping my career vision.
Behavioral Economics
This class (BE) addresses the flaws of classical economics theory with insights from psychology. This class was the merging of my foremost academic interests with logical and mathematical frameworks from economics. Remaining entranced with this interdisciplinary field after completing the class has further confirmed my focus on utilizing cognitively informed solutions within my UX career.
Leadership Theory & Practice
This Honors class focused on melding leadership models into a representation of how individuals function. It gave me grounds to identify the best work strategies for me to adopt going into the workplace. I applied them to understand and quantify leadership traits and actions.