Ang Yi Xin

Product Designer / UX EngineerSingapore

Background

Hi I am Yi Xin, a full-stack Product Designer and UX Engineer who can code. I have 13 years of experience making digital products and services across multiple industries such as government, healthcare, transport, enterprise and games. I am crazy about design systems and the intersection between tech and design. I enjoy making prototypes and bringing ideas to life. I love to solve problems and create impact through great design and UX. My biggest joy is to see my users achieve their goals through the interfaces without even realising it.

Currently, I am a product designer at Open Government Products. I was previously from Stripe and Amazon Web Services. I also led design for Parking.sg, Covid-19 Vaccination Appointment System and RedeemSG CDC Vouchers system in the Singapore government.

I had fun making this website using Figma, React, NextJS, MDX and Tailwind CSS and SCSS. My lifetime goal is grow my skills from design to code and be able to build my own products. My dream role is one that lets me explore in both design and code to solve problem and not be defined by the title of the role or hybrid role like UX engineer, design technologist, design engineer, design system engineer etc, but I haven't seen much of such roles in Singapore

Outside of design and code, I enjoy running, swimming and eating mala hotpot. I also like to spend time with my husband and son.

Experience

Stripe

Product Designer (Senior) Aug 2022-Nov 2022

Amazon Web Services

Design Architect 2021-2022

Government Technology Agency of Singapore

Senior Product Designer, Open Government Products 2019-2021

UX Designer, Data Science and AI Division 2014-2019

Singapore University of Technology and Design

Digital Content Strategist 2013-2014

Game Artist/ Designer 2012-2013

Singapore-MIT Gambit Game Lab

Game Artist/ Designer 2009-2012

Education

Design Sprint Masterclass

2021 AJ & Smart

Certified Cloud Practioner

2021 Amazon Web Services

Designing for Accessibility

2021 Udemy

Software Engineering Immersive

2019 General Assembly Singapore

UX Certificate

2017 Nielsen Norman Group (NN/g)

User Experience Design

2015 General Assembly Singapore

Visual Communication Specialist

2010 Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts (NAFA)

Bachelor of Fine Arts (Digital Animation)

2009 Nanyang Technological University (NTU)

Skills

Design

User Interface Design

Rapid Prototyping

Interaction Design

Design Systems

Visual Design

Motion Design

Research/UX

Design Thinking

Design Sprints

User Research

User Interviews

Wireframes

User Flows

Personas

Customer Journey

Workshop Facilitation

Software

Figma

Miro

After Effects

VSCode

GitHub

Photoshop

Illustrator

Microsoft Office

Google Suite

Development

HTML

CSS/ SCSS

Javascript

React

Git

Tailwind CSS

NextJS

Gatsby

Chakra UI

Lottie

Community

Rare Delegate

2022 Google Leadership Academy

Enhanced Art Programme Speaker

2022 Ministry of Education, Singapore

Mentoring

2022 Personal volunteering

The Long-Winded Version of my Origin Story

Before 1998Discovering the joy of creatingAs a kid, I enjoyed watching Disney animation, doodling and using lego blocks to build my own dream house. I also enjoyed exploring digital publishing software like Print Shop Delux and Print Artist. Going to library to use the internet to click through Yahoo's directory was the highlight of the week.

1999-2004Diving into the world of internet and new media I spent a lot time building cities and dream houses in Sim City and the Sims. I spent hours in Powerpoint and Photoshop to make my own designs and clipart animation. I made websites using FrontPage, Geocities and Homestead. I also used Macromedia Director and Flash to make interactive sites like those kiosks we saw at museums. I joined the Photography and Audio Visual club in school to make my own horror movies. Art and design became my favourite subject in school. Iframes, inline styles and HTML tables were the coolest.

2008First Game Dev InternshipWhile pursing a BFA in Fine Arts (Digital Animation) at NTU School of Art, Design and Media, I did a 2 month game development internship at MIT with the GAMBIT Game Lab. That's where I first worked as a game artist with PMs and programmers and made my first game - a Facebook social game. I got hooked and participated in Game Dev Hackathons.

2009-2012First Game and Web Dev JobI continued working for the game lab that I interned at to make more iOS and Facebook Flash social games. I also designed and built the websites to publicise the games.

2013-2014Major pivot to Design Thinking and UXI realised that I enjoyed making user interfaces (UIs), heads up display (HUDs), feedback animation and websites more than the storytelling & character art of game development itself. While making games was fun, I wanted to go beyond making nice looking things, I wanted to solve real world problems and make products that can make people's lives better. I started exploring 'UX', 'data-driven apps' and 'design thinking' and applied to join the Singapore government as a designer.

2015-2019Tech for Public GoodIn the government, I realised that what I learnt at game development was transferable to app and product development - prototyping, user testing and making sure your users enjoy using your products was key. It was an awesome feeling being able to solve everyday problems with small but impactful solutions.

2019Software Engineering ImmersiveEven though, I knew some HTML and CSS and had rough concepts of how everything came together. There was always the gap between what I design and what gets implemented. I feel helpless and dissatisfied with the poor translation of vision. What is feasible, what are the trade offs, which features can give us the best ROI, how can I realise the vision are questions I ask a lot. This curiosity led me to picking up Javascript and enrolled in General Assembly's Software Engineering Bootcamp full time for 3 months. I learnt about Javascript, NodeJS, Ruby on Rails, React. There was no turning back, I knew I wanted to both design and code to realise the ideas I have.

2019-2021More tech for public good + scaling designAs a senior designer on the team, I work on products and help scale the design team through improving processes and running design ops. I help move the team to from Sketch + Invision + Zeplin + Abstract to a full Figma pipeline. I also begin to work more on frontend, to bridge the gap between design and development. Tech for public good was fulfilling and Covid-19 sped up digitisation but all the rush left me very burnt out after 7 years in government. I needed time to explore other ways of doing tech and design so I left the government.

2021-2022Working Backwards @ Amazon Web ServicesI joined AWS. I learnt and practised Working Backwards, Amazon flavoured design thinking and innovation process. As a design architect, I innovate and design on behalf of enterprise customers such as BHP, Origin, Woodside and HSBC. I created a multi-brand design system to supercharge prototyping and development for our customers.

Aug - Nov 2022Product Design @ StripeI have always been a fan of Stripe, having used their products when designing payment products in the government. At Stripe, I get the opportunity to design a payment infrastructure for the global economy with great user experience! Unfortunately, my journey at Stripe ended in Nov 2022 abruptly due to the company-wide mass layoff.

Nov 2022 - Mar 2023On sabbaticalI need a break and I love making and building and so I am just designing for fun. Back to basics. Figma, design tokens, React, NextJS, D3 Yay! And of course spend time with my precious family.

Present DayBack to tech for public goodI missed my team and the meaningful project we do so I went back to the government.