Hello, my name is Kai. > I’m a full-stack product designer native to the East Bay, currently living in San Francisco. > I believe in functional open_in_new, accessible open_in_new, and user-driven open_in_new products.

About

Portrait of Kai Daniels. Curly hair. Cute face. Cute AF.

Hey! My name is Kai, and I live in San Francisco. I’m a designer and native of the Bay Area. I work professionally as a Digital Product Designer in Information Technology.

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Currently, I am working on a prototype of a smart mirror which is composed of a voice & dashboard interface with the focus of designing/engineering a TARS/Jarvis-like virtual assistant in the mirror's experience:

If you're curious to learn more, check out my Smart Mirror Prototype.

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For my personal interests, I love Fashion, Visual Culture, & Classical Antiquity. I also like experimenting with photography, light, & exposure:

Lightpainting in a cave.

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Thanks for stopping by. If you're interested in reaching out, you can find me on LinkedIn.

Résumé

Experience

Sep ‘19 – Oct ’22

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Lead Product Designer, Mobile & Design Systems
Academia, Inc.
Academia.edu
San Francisco, California

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Led the design of Academia’s iOS and Android apps, achieving ratings of 4.8 stars (both), over 2 million installs, and 160K/240K MAUs respectively.

Led design of Reader Tools, a subscription service enhancing PDF text readability on mobile, reaching a conversion rate of 400/month.

Led design of and managed a comprehensive Design System, unifying mobile and web platforms to foster team collaboration.

Aug ‘16 – Sep ’19

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Product Designer
Academia Inc.
Academia.edu
San Francisco, California

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Led design of Academia’s premium design language, enhancing brand consistency and templating of product pages for subscription conversion flows with peaks as high as 20,000 a month.

Collaborated in the design of the Websites for Academia Premium, facilitating the creation of personalized academic websites.

May ‘15 – Aug ’15

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UX Design Intern
Google Inc.
Gmail.com
Mountain View, California

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Collaborated with the Gmail team to explore bringing the Inbox by Gmail experience to wearable devices.

May ‘14 – Aug ’14

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Design Intern
Gengo Inc.
Gengo.com
San Mateo, California

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Collaborated in designing infographics for marketing campaigns & various visual designs.

Technical Skills

Design

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Interaction, Visual, Motion, Prototyping, Figma, Sketch, Webflow, Design Systems

UX, Research, & Psychology

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Human Perception & Heuristics, Interaction Behavior, User Interviews, Synthesis, Usability Testing, AB / Multi-variate Testing

Front-End Technology

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Svelte, HTML5, CSS3, JavaScript, Node.js, responsive frameworks

Education

Jul ‘19

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Mobile UX Certification
Neilsen Norman Group
nnggroup.com

Aug ‘11 – May ’16

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BFA, Graphic Design
San José State University,
Department of Design
San José, California