Hi! I'm Qiqi /ˈkɪki/.

I’m a Lead Product Designer and avid public transit rider based in Berlin. I currently lead design on Remix Transit, where I research and design tools that help planners create more effective and equitable transit systems. Previously, I worked on the search experience at Yelp to grow the home services marketplace and designed for the real estate team at Nextdoor.

My design approach is holistic, evidence-based, pragmatic, and detail-oriented. I care about software as part of larger social, civic, and ecological systems, and I’m interested in how interface decisions shape what becomes legible, measurable, and actionable in the world.

Before becoming a designer, I studied History and Data Science. That combination still grounds how I work: thinking critically about power, narratives, and institutions, while being comfortable working with data, complex systems, and digital tools.

These days, I’m especially interested in urban planning, civic design and critical approaches to software. Interfaces can be used to question defaults, explore alternative futures, and imagine different relationships between people, data, and infrastructure.

I also love being a part of the vibrant design community in Berlin, speaking at meetups like Berlin Product Designer Meetup and Service Design Drinks, coaching at events like the Berlin Service Design Jam, and connecting with other product and interaction designers. Outside of the digital realm, I love knitting, printmaking, and occasionally throwing pottery — slow, tactile practices that balance the often immaterial nature of software.

In the past, I’ve mentored emerging designers on Cofolio and built small tools like a Figma Plugin for organizing and synthesizing user research notes. I’m drawn to tools-for-thought and curious about how designers can create software that supports reflection, collaboration, and more open-ended ways of working (but then FigJam came along…).

Going even further back, I was a member of the first graduating class at Minerva Schools, where I lived in 7 countries while helping to shape a new paradigm for higher education. During this wild ride, I had the chance to learn and practice design in a variety of organizational and cultural contexts, including a then early-stage startup (Scoop characteristically in San Francisco, USA), an new ventures incubator (Hitomedia in Tokyo, Japan), a digital design agency (Aerolab in Buenos Aires, Argentina), and an education NGO (Kiron in Berlin, Germany). In 2018, I was selected as one of 17 Kleiner Perkins design fellows.