Yidan Xu

Yīdān Xú “ee-dahn shoo”

I turn ambiguous problems into shipped products.

Product Designer · 0–1 · AI · London
1Soul homepage — ‘Be seriously matched, not just casually seen’
2026 · AI · Product strategy · Website

1SoulIn my second month there I rebuilt the site around one audience, and female sign-ups went up 25%.

The only designer at an EWOR-backed AI startup. I work with the CEO on what the product is, and I own the front end on my own.

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The Urify product, photographed for its James Dyson Award 2025 entry
2026 · Health care · 0–1 · Startup

UrifyA toilet tablet that catches kidney disease early, and runner-up for the UK James Dyson Award.

Founded solo. Covered by Reuters and Dezeen, incubated by Imperial College London, and taken to the NHS.

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2025 · Health · AI · 0–1

Innovate ADHDWe rebuilt the ADHD assessment in two weeks, and 82% of visitors stayed to do it.

A clinical form this audience is known to abandon, redesigned around how ADHD actually behaves. Product manager, the only designer, and the person doing the marketing.

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Xiaomi SU7 digital cockpit interior
2025 · HMI · Digital cockpit

Xiaomi AutoA new EV cockpit, taken into Europe.

Xiaomi's first car sold 258,000 in its first full year, ahead of the Tesla Model 3 in China. I owned eight system modules and the System UI specification, across the central and rear screens.

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Presenting research findings to the Huawei product team
2024 · UI/UX · Data-driven

HuaweiOne design language across five B2B apps.

Three projects on identity, structure and cross-app consistency, all grounded in behaviour data.

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A hand holding a phone showing the RES app’s Breathe Easy welcome screen, with the RES sensor standing behind it
2025 · Health · Product · Design system

RESUsers ranked ten features in a workshop, and their top five became the roadmap.

Pollen data people act on. The map was A/B tested. DIA Award, and second prize at the Analytics for Society Award 2025.

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More work Branding, Web3, interactive products and illustration
PulpaTronics website hero — hanging paper NFC tags
2024 · UI/UX · Branding · Startup

PulpatronicsA brand for a paper-electronics startup.

The only designer in a team of eight. Colour system, promotional material, and the visual support for their workshops.

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A minted NFT collectible shown on a phone mockup
2023 · Web3 · Startup

NFTA platform for making and trading your own avatar.

A Chinese NFT marketplace built in a one-month sprint, with the avatar builder at the centre of it.

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A playtester wearing a VR headset, controllers raised, in front of the flooded Westminster game world
2023 · Interactive product · VR · Unity

EntropyA VR world in a flooded Westminster.

I designed the whole loop: what a player sees, what they can do, and what the system does back.

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The gesture-controlled lock device
2023 · Interactive product · Machine learning · Hardware

GestureA lock with no keypad.

It reads four hand gestures and the angle each one turns to. Taken from an idea to a working device, machine learning included.

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Fantasy-style illustration of a character holding a small glowing white rabbit
2024 · Design · Illustration

IllustratorFreelance illustration, 2019–2025.

Commission work, with the method and the style adapted to each client.

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About

Research first. Then design.

I am a product designer and a researcher, based in London. I did a double master's in Innovation Design Engineering at Imperial College London and the Royal College of Art. I like problems that need science and people at the same time. Right now I am building Urify. It is a health product, and Imperial College London is incubating it.

How I work

How I work with AI.

AI spends most of its time adding. The taste for taking things away has to stay with a person. Everyone has the same tools now, so anything involving a person I still do by hand, and AI does the extracting, cross-checking, generating and testing around it. I wrote down the whole loop, and what building this way taught me about how much a system should decide on its own.

Prototyping with AI

I build the prototype, so the answer comes from use.

A mockup tells you what something looks like. It cannot tell you whether anyone comes back to it on day nine. So when a question needs real use to answer, I use AI to build the working thing and put it in front of someone. Below is one I kept using myself, which is the honest test.

mood_guard.py

MoodGuard

A prototype I still use · macOS widget · built with Claude Code

I work alone on urgent things a lot. When I do, I get absorbed and forget the rest. I forget food. I forget sleep. I forget people. So I built MoodGuard. It is a widget, and it sits on the desktop next to the stock ones. It tracks the things that recharge me. You pick your own list. Each activity gets one pill, and you tap a pill to fill it in. A big number counts the days since the last one. Go 14 days with no real recharge and it warns you. Then you can do something before a low mood lands. It is free, and you can change all of it.

What it looks like
The macOS menu bar with MoodGuard sitting among the normal icons: a flat, unimpressed face followed by the text 10d
The part I look at most. It lives in the menu bar, and the face changes with the count. Ten days without anything that recharged me, and it stops pretending to be fine.
MoodGuard on the macOS desktop beside the stock Weather, Calendar and battery widgets, showing a 0-day counter and seven activity pills with three checked off in mint
It sits at desktop level and looks like the stock widgets. Tap a pill to check it off for today.
MoodGuard's customise sheet, a plain text box with one activity per line, being edited to add 'Walk my dog'
The list is yours. One activity per line, up to 12. Remove a line and it keeps the history.
Now

Mostly heads-down on weaving AI into everyday life: not chatbots bolted onto things, but small, specific tools that remove real friction. Some ship as client work, some are just for me, like the MoodGuard widget above. Also building Urify and designing at 1Soul.

Updated July 2026 · London
Contact

Let's work together.

Open to product design roles and collaborations in London and remotely.