About Tianyu
design, build, play

Works

 

a peek of my works 

I like to wear different hats in my career.  I do experience design, user research, game design, project management, tinkering... The exact skillsets might vary, but at the end, it's really all about

defining the problems, setting up the goals, creating the solutions, testing, iterating, and validating the results. 

 
 
Serious game design | Research | Maker's fun

Green pet -- human plant interaction

I was experiencing lots of stress before my Master's dissertation, so I read some papers about what kind of interactions can reduce stress.  It turned out touching plants and repetitive interactions can both do the job.  So I designed three little games in Unity, used an Arduino Flora board, turned the plant into a game controller!  The entire study paper was later accepted to CHI PLAY 2016 Conference. 

 
UX | Serious game design | Research

BETWINE -- wearable social game

When wearables just started to become such a trend, I joined this young startup in Shenzhen, China to work on the product that uses game mechanisms to help reduce people's sedentary behaviors.  I enjoyed designing for the app - wearable, online - offline experiences, I also felt much achieved because I got to implement the theories (e.g. Social Cognitive theory, behavior change theory, game design theories, etc.) into real practice! 

 
China Edventure cover.001.jpeg 
Market Research

overview of China's digital education market

Yes I do market research as well.  To take advantage of my bilingual and bi-cultural background, I've been helping business doing more researches targeting Asian especially Chinese market. 

I've been also exploring on how to connect the UX measurements with the global business KPIs.

 
UX Design | Design thinking process

non-member home page redesign

The project is to redesign the home page of abcmouse.com before people subscribe for the service.  I got to lead the project and work with 5 other UX designers to walk through a thorough UX exercise including affinity diagram, persona building, competitive analysis, dots voting with a full story to tell. 

 
Maker's fun

buzz pillow for a healthier neck

Ok, this is another Arduino project, again, it's a game with a serious purpose.  This time, you play the game with your neck.  I always suffer from sore neck, because I always forget to move my neck more often, and it's not that fun moving it.  So I put three pressure pads into a travel pillow and programed a "Whac-a-mole" game into those kits and wires. 

 
Game design

crazy train & SPACE DUET

Two little games I worked on when I was in Michigan State's game design program.  Both are puzzle games (because that's my favorite game genre, duh), one is space themed and the other is west themed.  I was the game designer / level designer for both games, did some UI work as well, built in Unity 3D.  I can't not mention it -- working on Space Duet is when I first got attracted to a talented and handsome engineer -- my future husband!

 
Prototyping

Learning path interactions

I've always loved prototyping.  Either physical or virtual.  Virtual wise, I think prototyping is such an essential way to examine your user flow, interactions, animations, AND it is such an efficient way to communicate your ideas and showcase your design.  Of course, the work needs to be done with LAYER-BASED prototyping tools.  

 
UX Design

Englis learning diary concept

We had a lot of English teaching animation episodes features in a few different characters.  The challenge is -- how do we connect those animations with other learning activities and how do we package those dry animations to make them more appealing to Chinese kids?  I remembered that writing diary was a routine in my childhood, so was it to many other Chinese kids, so I explored the idea of an interactive diary for English learning. I also mocked up the UI piece for learning progress report that will be sent to Chinese parents. 

 
I hope those projects gave you a better idea of who I am and what do I do.
Due to NDA, HIPPA, COPPA and other complicated reasons, I can't show all of my works here, especially those user research reports.
But I will be more than happy to show you in person if there's an opportunity!