I'm Yiruo Zhao. I'm a Product designer and systems thinker—shipping clarity where complexity lives. I live in the Tampa Bay area with my husband and our two kids.
Background
My training started in visual communication design, where I fell in love with typography as a way to carry emotion and meaning—not as decoration, but as structure. That still shapes how I treat hierarchy, language, and the small interface details that add up to a credible whole.
Type is often the first voice a product has—before anyone clicks.
I continued at Parsons School of Design in New York (The New School), studying the intersection of design and technology: focusing on UX and interaction design.
Today I bring that blend into dense surfaces—making workflows legible, scalable, and calm for the users who rely on them.
Design Framework
I use the Double Diamond as my core framework, but in real product teams the first diamond is often compressed by time and resource constraints. AI helps me expand that discovery space within those constraints so we start with a stronger problem foundation before jumping into solution mode.
- Frame and pressure-test the problem faster with broader initial exploration.
- Synthesize patterns from research notes and signals to sharpen direction.
- Move into prototyping with clearer hypotheses and better decision confidence.