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
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:
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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
Lead Product Designer, Mobile & Design Systems
Academia, Inc.
Academia.edu
San Francisco, California
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
Product Designer
Academia Inc.
Academia.edu
San Francisco, California
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
UX Design Intern
Google Inc.
Gmail.com
Mountain View, California
Collaborated with the Gmail team to explore bringing the Inbox by Gmail experience to wearable devices.
May ‘14 – Aug ’14
Design Intern
Gengo Inc.
Gengo.com
San Mateo, California
Collaborated in designing infographics for marketing campaigns & various visual designs.
Technical Skills
Design
Interaction, Visual, Motion, Prototyping, Figma, Sketch, Webflow, Design Systems
UX, Research, & Psychology
Human Perception & Heuristics, Interaction Behavior, User Interviews, Synthesis, Usability Testing, AB / Multi-variate Testing
Front-End Technology
Svelte, HTML5, CSS3, JavaScript, Node.js, responsive frameworks
Education
Jul ‘19
Mobile UX Certification
Neilsen Norman Group
nnggroup.com
Aug ‘11 – May ’16
BFA, Graphic Design
San José State University,
Department of Design
San José, California