Yunan Xing

Most designers want a brief. I want to understand the business behind the product: why it needs to exist, who it has to win over, and what's actually standing in the way of that.

That's usually where I start, sometimes a workshop with a founder, sometimes a long conversation with someone who's been too close to the problem for too long. Either way, the design that comes out of it is better, because it's built on something real.

I'm a Lead Product Designer at Up Strategy Lab, working across industrial SaaS, EdTech, Web3 and AI-native tools. I love how different each one is, my favourite part of any project is still that first conversation where the real problem comes into focus. I've been using AI seriously for over a year now, across research, prototyping, documentation and delivery, and I've built custom agents that handle recurring work on their own. It's changed what one person can actually ship, by quite a lot.

If you're building something complex and need design that connects to the business case, I'd love to hear about it.