Throughout her professional experience in multiple arenas of product design, Ziyun Liang has become notorious for churning out creative ideas, quickly mocking them up, and providing a clear pathway to making her ideas come to life. Her brain moves quickly, but she moves quicker. Constantly focused on the big picture and the end goal, Ziyun Liang helps her teams move through all the necessary steps while acting as the guiding light through every roadblock and obstacle. It takes a revolutionary mind to consider all the aspects of product launches in the NFT space, but to Ziyun, it's second nature at this point.
Her passion for design started during her early career days at marketing agencies and startups, where she was constantly challenged to create new concepts for various products and experiences and make them come to life. Not only did she find out that she loved this type of work, but it quickly became clear that Ziyun was a natural.
While working at Marcopolo Learning, Ziyun was a lead product designer responsible for building a from-scratch digital experience for Marcopolo World School. With a close partnership with the CEO of the organization, Ziyun and her team designed, produced, and built a minimum viable product of the new application that attracted over $8.5 million in investment. This experience empowered Ziyun, allowing her to prove to herself that she was ready to take on bigger challenges, solve more problems, and design more intricate digital user experiences.
After realizing that she wanted to be able to design her own products, life granted her an opportunity: Ziyun had a chance encounter with Audrey Ou, the founder of TRLab, an NFT company. Upon getting to know Audrey, it became clear that the two shared many of the same passions and ideas, and Ziyun was brought on to lead two different projects at TRLab.
Being new to the NFT space is overwhelming, and Ziyun had to do a lot of heavy lifting to wrap her mind around the power of blockchain and the potential of the NFT space. However, it became abundantly clear that her design skills and formal background in art education could play a valuable role in the NFT landscape. The projects that brought Ziyun into the NFT space were AI2041 and Your Daytime Fireworks, both of which sold out in minutes and generated multi-millions in revenue.
The design of Your Daytime Fireworks was extra special because it was so much more than just a new NFT; instead, it created a wonderful, fascinating user experience, leaving everyone more intrigued with each passing phase. Its phased release approach not only allowed a variety of access points and custom design decisions, but ultimately, each interested person was allowed to make decisions that would make their piece of art unique from other tokens in the series. Deciding to "release" their fireworks at a certain time in Australia would provide a different outcome than someone who decided to release them in China, which meant that each buyer's experience was unique, just like the final NFT they received.
With a personal mantra of "use design to delight the world," Ziyun Liang is an example to all product designers that the confines of your brain are the hardest confines to break free from. Once you convince yourself that anything is possible, you can create it.
Today, Ziyun works as a Senior Product Designer at The New York Times, helping this mass media company rethink its user experience and user-oriented offerings. Ziyun has made it clear that her ability to solve problems is unmatched and the creative side of her brain is always on overdrive. With imaginative vision and an ambitious drive, Ziyun Liang is going to go far. Where she goes is anyone's guess, but keeping an eye on her career and current projects will pay off.
