About Me
I’m an award-winning designer and educator based in Singapore, with over 15 years of experience in UX, service design, industrial design and creative education. In 2025, I received the Singapore Design Award for an intergenerational programme that connects youths facing mental health challenges with retired seniors through photographic storytelling.
In 2024, I spoke at Xi’an Eurasia University’s Design Week, sharing my talk on service design across cultures — a topic close to my heart, where design becomes a bridge across worldviews, values, and expectations.
I’m fully bilingual and can deliver talks in English or Mandarin, depending on your programme’s needs.
You can find out more about my past experiences here.
Talk Topics
1. Service Design Across Cultures: Making Meaning in Context
A real-world lens on how service design must shift across cultural boundaries. This talk unpacks what designers need to notice, respect, and adapt when designing systems or experiences for communities different from their own.
– For students in service design, UX, or industrial design.
2. Designing with Empathy: Beyond Personas and Pain Points
This talk reframes empathy as something more than a research phase — highlighting how cultural humility and active listening shape truly human-centered services.
– Ideal for intermediate or final-year students in user research, service design or industrial design.
3. The Objects We Keep: The Emotional Side of Everyday Design
A reflective session where students bring in personally meaningful objects and unpack their emotional, cultural, and functional significance — revealing what people really value.
– Works as a workshop or seminar for design storytelling or speculative design modules.
What Students Will Gain
- A deeper lens on what makes design meaningful
- Real-world stories connecting people and products
- Encouragement to look beyond utility in their work
- New questions about how design influences identity
Student Workshops
In addition to the talks, I can also conduct short workshops before or after the session. These are interactive and practical, helping students apply ideas immediately.
Workshop examples:
- Cultural Mapping for Design Projects
- Object-Based Research Methods
- Empathy in Practice: Fieldwork & Reflection Tools
Delivery Format
- In-person (Preferred)
- Online
Past Speaking Engagements
Nov 2024
Visual Beyond Limits, Xi’an Eurasia University, China
Service Design Across Cultures
Mar 2019
Service Jam Singapore, Singapore
Prototyping
May 2017
Keeping Asia Cohesive in the Face of Uncertainties and Anti-Globalisation Trends, Singapore (by Temasek Foundation International)
Being part of the panel which included Ms Grace Fu, then Minister helming MCCY
Jul 2013
Pecha Kucha, Heineken Open Design Explorations, Singapore
Find out more about me from my CV.
Reach out to me at hello@yanjeyanjie.com