Max LaRue

DIGITAL DESIGN


student bio

Max is an aspiring UX designer whose career has revolved around his fervent fascination with usability. Max is currently an in house designer for a local architecture group where he is in charge of tasks ranging from print collateral to exhibition design to VR experiences.

However, most of his time is spent at CU Denver, where he is wrapping up his Digital Design degree working with some of the finest students and professors in Colorado. Driven by the power of interaction and a yearning for learning, Max is chomping at the bit to make the world a little better one step at a time.

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artist statement


For a very long time the one thing that’s consistently held my attention is the question –How could this be easier to use? The struggle for usability and the joy of a flawless interaction have been two sides of the coin that’s propelled me to where I am today. I think of design as the small-scale process that makes facets of our lives a little more manageable and pleasant. With that in mind, I find that the most fascinating element of design is the psychological portion, where we can use patterns and interactions to drive behavior in a user.

With increasing connectivity in the world, very few people do things in a vacuum, so I took a look at what problems could stand to benefit from a community working behind them. To that end, I turned to the problems facing social media– a platform that, while still wildly popular, is suffering from a massive amount of distrust. I find that the woes of social media platforms are in large part caused by the structure of the platforms.

I think that the problem of ruthless, negative, and exclusive online communities can be expunged through a more behavioral approach to the restrictions and allowances provided within the social media platform. In short: I want to design a social media platform that not only facilitates but encourages positive and inclusive community engagement using behavioral design techniques.