Yanxi Feng

About

I'm a Product Designer (Brown + RISD, HCI focus) who's happiest turning messy, real-world user behavior into products people actually use. I co-founded Hippo Ad, a startup we deployed across multiple apartment buildings, where I learned that the best product decisions come from watching real users and the people who maintain the system — not from the spec sheet. I'm drawn to early-stage teams where I can own problems end to end, wear a lot of hats, and keep leveling up across disciplines. Outside of work, I'm usually prototyping something on a 3D printer or a lathe.

Experience

• Co-Founder & Product Owner · Hippo Ad Seattle09-01-2022 – 03-01-2025

  - Built and launched a digital signage platform from 0 to 1, scaling to 16 apartment buildings and 1,200+ residents over 2.5 years of stable operation, after field research surfaced a three-sided gap across management, residents, and local businesses. - Cut resident information-finding time by 40% and lifted management publishing efficiency by 50% by designing the content workflows, account/permission system, and a custom CMS integrated with smart-screen hardware and third-party design APIs. - Grew contracted revenue to $3K+ per month and reached 200,000+ annual ad impressions by defining the product positioning and business model and iterating on continuous user feedback.

• Design Lab Researcher · Brown University09-01-2025 – 06-01-2026

  - Drove 100% course-prototype completion across 360+ students and cut average prototype-development time by 30% by guiding them through structural design, material selection, and fabrication planning from concept to working prototype. - Raised digital-to-physical build success by 40% by introducing AI tools (e.g., Codex) to speed software-prototype iteration and training students on 3D printing and laser cutting. - Lead a research thread on 3D-printing filament reuse, building reuse workflows from concept to physical prototype.

• Product Designer Intern · Youzhicai Technology Development07-01-2023 – 09-01-2023

  - Improved search efficiency by 35% and cut average information-finding time by 28% by designing keyword-suggestion and auto-complete features and redesigning the search flow on the company's online bidding platform. - Shipped the solution one week ahead of schedule by building high-fidelity Figma prototypes that validated the design early and aligned the team, grounded in a user-journey analysis that isolated the core retrieval pain points.

• Product Manager · Husky Seed Fund03-01-2023 – 06-01-2023

  - Increased seat utilization by 27% and lifted self-reported willingness to socialize by 40% by designing and 3D-printing a tabletop social-prompt device, based on research and observation. - Won the program's "Most Implementation Potential" award after partnering with the university library to field-test and deploy 200+ iterated units.

Education

• Brown University & RISDMaster's, Design Engineering (Dual Degree)
• University of WashingtonB.S., Human-Centered Design & Engineering

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