About Me

I’m Xiwen Yan (Echo), a designer based in New Jersey and pursuing an MFA in Interaction Design at the School of Visual Arts in New York. With a background in industrial design, I work across digital interfaces, physical experiences, and visual communication.

My experience spans exhibition visitor journeys, event materials, and a subtitle conversion tool with 1,000+ downloads. I’m interested in making experiences clear, engaging, and practical to produce.

✦ Want the pictures? Explore my full portfolio, with case studies, interactive experiments, and a few boats.

Selected Projects

Feed the Beat | Gesture-Controlled Rhythm Game

Independent Interaction Design · Oct 2026
Play Online · GitHub

Built a camera-based call-and-response rhythm game with Claude: six hand gestures, seven difficulty levels, and on-device MediaPipe hand tracking.
After playtesting, aligned every note to the beat, added camera-lag compensation, a guided tutorial, and latency calibration.

Serpentine | Rhythm Snake Game

Collaborative Game Design · Oct 2026
Play Online

Co-designed gameplay, art style, and snake attribute settings with a classmate; built the five-level game with Claude and refined details from player feedback.

Independent UX & Service Design Concept · Jun – Oct 2025

Identified barriers to participation in bar-based social activities through field observations and a survey with 68 valid responses.
Created a service blueprint, mobile user flows, and a UI kit, plus physical task cards connecting digital and in-person activities.
Tested paper prototypes with 3 participants to evaluate invitation timing, recommendations, and task-completion clarity.

Cityweave | Skill Exchange Service System

Independent Service System Design Concept · Sep – Dec 2025

Designed an offline skills ecosystem connecting learning, skill monetization, in-person social interaction, and city co-creation.
Built a stakeholder map, app flows, a storyboard, high-fidelity interfaces, and a service system map.

VTT to LRC Converter

Product Manager · Dec 2025 – Present
GitHub · Live Web App

Led product design, branding, and launch promotion for an Android subtitle converter; reached 1,000+ total downloads.
The Android and web versions support local file processing and batch conversion, with progress feedback and actionable error messages.

More projects, including SubForm, SHAVI, Simple Joy and Tideblade, are on my portfolio.

Internship Experience

Beijing Gehua Design Co., Ltd.

Design Intern · Beijing · Mar – Jun 2025

Independently designed a task-based visitor journey for a proposed imperial-cuisine exhibition, linking physical exhibits with ingredient collection, cooking choices, and personalized feedback.
Iterated on existing interface designs for task guidance, ingredient-card collection, and results screens.
Translated stakeholder requirements into design revisions, balancing the visitor experience with budget and production constraints.
Independently proposed commercialization concepts, including themed merchandise, food-brand collaborations, and restaurant partnerships.

COSCO Seafarer Management Co., Ltd.

Visual Design Intern · Shanghai · Nov – Dec 2024

Designed posters, staff badges, invitations, and interactive check-in stations for the “Haiyuji” maritime culture market.
Collaborated with a 9-member design team to maintain visual consistency across event materials using shared assets.
Reviewed commercial-use permissions and cultural sensitivities when selecting visual assets.

Education

School of Visual Arts

MFA in Interaction Design · New York, NY
Sep 2026 – Expected 2028

Shanghai Maritime University

Bachelor of Engineering in Industrial Design · Shanghai, China
Sep 2022 – Jun 2026

Skills

Design methods: User research, user flows, wireframing, usability testing
Design & prototyping: Figma, Photoshop, Illustrator
3D & rendering: Rhino, Blender, KeyShot, D5
Physical computing & development: Arduino, vibe coding
Languages: English (proficient), Chinese (native)

Awards

National Third Prize (2025); Shanghai Second Prizes (2024 & 2025) — China Creative Challenges Contest
Gold & Bronze (2025) — FA International Frontier Innovation Design Competition (China Division)
Silver & 2 Bronze Awards (2025) — ICAD International Contemporary Youth Art Design Competition
Silver Award (2025) — Global Visio International Design
Provincial Silver Award (2025) — Eastern Creative Star Design (team project)
Second Prize (2024) — Huichuang Youth, Shanghai Student Creative Works Exhibition (Product Design)
SMU Scholarship (2023 & 2024) — Shanghai Maritime University

Additional Experience

RedNote (Xiaohongshu)

Content Creator

Created food and lifestyle content; a single post has reached 750K views and 35K likes.

Interests

Games: Overwatch, rhythm, puzzle and indie games. I play with a designer’s eye: how a hit lands on the beat, how a puzzle teaches its rules without words, why one menu feels slow and another instant. Feed the Beat and Serpentine grew out of these notes.