Yijie Ding

My work sits between product design and front-end prototyping. I use Figma to shape the system, code to test the behavior, and writing to keep the decision-making honest. The best projects usually end up as both a design file and something that runs.

I started with interaction design because small details change the whole contract between a person and a product: where attention goes, when feedback arrives, what the system explains, and what it should quietly refuse to do. Games, tools, and AI products all taught me that trust is often built in those small moments.

My interest sits where interaction design meets language, voice, and time. I think a lot about what an interface promises, what it's allowed to do when no one is looking, what it should refuse. My senior thesis, Animus, came out of those questions: how to design something that listens to a person and remembers them, without pretending to be them.

This fall I'm moving up to Seattle to start a master's at the University of Washington — Technology Innovation. I chose it because it sits between design, engineering, and policy, which is roughly where the work has been pointing for a while.

When I'm not at my desk, I photograph typography in the wild, keep long-form notes in Markdown, and look for the cafe in any new city that still respects an A4 sheet.

Chronology

2026 — Fall

Begin Master's in Technology Innovation at the University of Washington (UW MSTI), Seattle.

2026 — Summer

Available for design residencies, internships, or design-engineering collaborations. Open to West Coast and remote.

2026 — Spring

Senior Thesis at California College of the Arts — Animus, a conversational layer over recorded voice and writing.

2025 — Jul–Nov

Product Intern at KuCoin (remote).

2025

TouchlessGo— gesture control for older drivers, so phone functions don't require hunting for buttons.

2024 — Apr–May

Design Intern on Microsoft Teams (remote).

2024

Tempo — a versatile work-buddy plugin designed to support the rhythm of daily tasks.

2022

Started BFA Interaction Design at CCA, San Francisco.

The toolkit

How I work

Solo when the question is unfamiliar; with collaborators (human and AI) when the question is heavy. On Animus I worked as design and product lead with three AI agents on the build side — Claude as architect, Codex on the server, Gemini on the front end — and a formal review at every plan and every diff. The discipline forced every meaty decision into writing first, which is the part I've come to like most.

I'd rather ship a small, deliberate thing than a large vague one. I write the spec before the prompt; the prompt before the code. I keep a list of things I've refused to build.