Nice to meet you! ✴︎˚。
Hi! My name is Maija (pronounced 'Maya'), and I'm a junior at Northwestern University studying cognitive science, design, and human-computer interaction with a focus on experience and product design. But before I found my way to design, my path wound through linguistics, psychology, and dance—each giving me different ways to understand people and how they move through the world.
Born and raised on the internet, I grew up fascinated by both exploring and building: designing worlds in Minecraft, teaching myself design and video editing tools, and spending years thinking about how to connect with an audience through dance and choreography. My path wasn't linear, but the through-line was always the same— a deep curiosity about the relationship between people and the systems they interact with.
Hi! My name is Maija (pronounced 'Maya'), and I'm a junior at Northwestern University studying cognitive science, design, and human-computer interaction with a focus on experience and product design. But before I found my way to design, my path wound through linguistics, psychology, and dance—each giving me different ways to understand people and how they move through the world.
Born and raised on the internet, I grew up fascinated by both exploring and building: designing worlds in Minecraft, teaching myself design and video editing tools, and spending years thinking about how to connect with an audience through dance and choreography. My path wasn't linear, but the through-line was always the same— a deep curiosity about the relationship between people and the systems they interact with.
My toolkit ᝰ
That lifelong fascination drives everything I do as a designer. To me, great design makes technology feel natural, intuitive, and, ideally a little magical.
I bring an unusual toolkit to my work. I trained as a pre-professional dancer for 10 years, which taught me to be rigorously detail-oriented and gave me a strong eye for aesthetics. Just as importantly, it instilled resilience, humility, and a constant drive for improvement. And through studying linguistics and psychology, I learned how people make meaning—how language, perception, and context shape understanding. Together, these experiences shape how I approach design today: curious, iterative, and grounded in how people think, feel, and communicate.
That lifelong fascination drives everything I do as a designer. To me, great design makes technology feel natural, intuitive, and, ideally a little magical.
I bring an unusual toolkit to my work. I trained as a pre-professional dancer for 10 years, which taught me to be rigorously detail-oriented and gave me a strong eye for aesthetics. Just as importantly, it instilled resilience, humility, and a constant drive for improvement. And through studying linguistics and psychology, I learned how people make meaning—how language, perception, and context shape understanding. Together, these experiences shape how I approach design today: curious, iterative, and grounded in how people think, feel, and communicate.
Outside of design, find me…
🩰 Dancing and choreographing in my room
🩰 Dancing and choreographing in my room
👩💻 Experimenting with new AI tools
👩💻 Experimenting with new AI tools
🧘♀️ Practicing my yoga poses
🧘♀️ Practicing my yoga poses
[一] get to know me in photos!
