“I’m Annie Zhang,
I make the technology disappear—so that the human can shine through”
A hybrid
I’m one part artist, one part designer, one part engineer — and a lifelong tinker-er. I am singularly obsessed with creating products and experiences that enrich our shared human experience, and my best work comes from taking a hybrid approach to questioning, understanding, and then re-imagining the world around me.
The artist in me asks: What story are we telling? Where can we make it sing?
The designer in me asks: Who are we creating for? Why will this matter to them?
The engineer in me asks: How do we make this work really well? Not just once, but over and over again?
And the tinker-er in me dives right into the process of building, taking apart, and re-building until I finally get it right.
While my project and work experience is deepest in design, my work is always informed by my varied experiences across the entire art-engineering spectrum. Each curve here represents the different skills I strengthened through each project.
On stories and Storytelling
As a product designer, it’s a privilege to be making decisions that shape a product and eventually touch the life of the person using it. With this privilege comes a responsibility to remember that people and products don’t exist in a vacuum: they exist in a complex cultural, economic, and political context.
This is why storytelling is the foundation of my design work. My design process always starts with a desire to deeply understand the stories and the lives of the people who inspire the work. Only then can I add to the story, with a creation that will truly enrich the human experience for those who inspired it.