About Me
I'm Jiayi, a product designer who works on AI-native products and engineers tangible things. I design interfaces and the visual systems behind them — type, layout, color, motion, and the rules that keep hundreds of screens looking like one product.
I work on AI products. At Bestie, an AI companion app, I design the interface, the visual extensions of its AI characters, and the ad creative for the US and Japan markets. The visual rules the brand can't break are mine too, and when the work drifts off them, I'm the one who finds it and fixes it.
How I work with AI
Decide before you generate.
I don't hand taste to the model. Ask it for something "premium" or "clean" and you get the average of its training data. Who the user is, what the brand is, how it should feel: I settle that first, then AI can raise the ceiling instead of just the speed.
Bestie's first AI ads looked like ads, and nothing like Bestie.
Write the standard into the system.
A design system should hold more than components: what the user is here for, and the mistakes we must never make. Then a person still checks the output.
An avatar is never the logo, the UI is never invented: those rules live in code, and every image still passes review.
Done is not good.
AI makes making fast, so the judgment moves to after it's made. I read the whole journey like an editor, and I'm willing to kill something finished.
The first relationship radar tested well, but it judged the people users love. I cut it and pointed it at the user instead.
Berkeley & SAIC
I studied at SAIC, where I developed a foundation in material exploration, conceptual thinking, and visual experimentation. Later, I earned a Master of Design from UC Berkeley, focusing on human-technology interaction and design.
Field Research at a Cancer Hospital
Outside of design work, I explore physical movement, material play, and spatial performance. These acts are not leisure, they are where I refine my sense of structure, pace, and response.
