Hello, my name is Kai. > I’m a full-stack product designer native to the East Bay, currently living in the San Francisco Bay Area.

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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.

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


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Lightpainting in a cave.
Failing arcing golden sparks running along the inner wall of a rail tunnel.Storm drain swatched in multicolored spray paint and art.Center of an outdoor building's internal area, covered in garbage and spraypaint.Huge storm drain under urban infrastructure, liminal long, concrete, rectilinear, dark, with rectangular slots of light.
Failing arcing golden sparks running along the inner wall of a rail tunnel.Storm drain swatched in multicolored spray paint and art.Center of an outdoor building's internal area, covered in garbage and spraypaint.Huge storm drain under urban infrastructure, liminal long, concrete, rectilinear, dark, with rectangular slots of light.
Looking down the hall of a dilapidated abandoned mental hospital.Woman walking into a square opening with rafter-filtered lights.Looking out of a brick train tunnel with the tracks exiting to a truss bridge.Dilapidated Pier with blue and gold hues. Pier right angles to the center from the right perspective, topped with a 3-windowed, tattered, dockhouse.

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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 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