By Emily Williams
Jingyi Zhu is a product and UX designer whose work focuses on making complex digital systems easier to understand and navigate. With a background that spans computer science, interaction design, and journalism, she approaches design as more than visual problem-solving. For her, design is a way to bring structure and clarity to products that users often find overwhelming.
One of her notable projects is her work on CRED, a platform in the financial technology space. Within the project, Zhu focused on improving how complex financial information is structured and presented, particularly in moments where users are required to make decisions involving risk. Her work addressed a common challenge in financial products. A gap often exists between dense technical data and users’ ability to interpret it with confidence.
Rather than approaching the problem through surface-level visual changes, Zhu concentrated on restructuring the experience at a deeper level. She analyzed key friction points across the user journey, identifying where users hesitated, dropped off, or needed additional effort to understand the information presented. These insights informed a series of design decisions aimed at reducing cognitive load and making interactions more intuitive.
Her contributions included redefining how critical data is grouped and surfaced, introducing clearer visual hierarchies, and refining interaction flows so that each step communicates intent more clearly. Instead of presenting all available information at once, the experience was designed to guide users progressively, allowing them to focus on what matters most at each stage of the process.
A central aspect of her work was improving clarity in high-stakes scenarios. By streamlining decision paths and removing unnecessary complexity, the product became easier to navigate and more aligned with how users process information in real-world contexts. In a financial environment where trust is closely tied to understanding, these improvements play a significant role in shaping user confidence and engagement.
Beyond her work on specific interaction flows, Zhu contributed to broader system-level consistency across the product. She helped align design patterns and components across different parts of the platform, ensuring a more cohesive experience for users. This approach reflects her belief that effective design is not limited to individual screens, but extends to how an entire system functions as a unified whole.
Her work has also received recognition from several international design awards, reflecting the strength of her approach to solving complex product challenges.
Her design approach is grounded in balancing user needs with business objectives. Rather than treating these as competing forces, she views them as interconnected, where improving clarity and usability can directly support long-term engagement and product growth.
This perspective also informs how she approaches emerging technologies. As digital products become more complex, Zhu sees artificial intelligence not as a separate layer, but as a continuation of the same design challenge: making complexity understandable and actionable for users.
In her recent work, she has explored ways to integrate AI-driven interactions into product workflows, allowing users to access insights, automate repetitive tasks, and engage with data in more dynamic and contextual ways. Instead of introducing entirely new interfaces, her focus is on embedding intelligence into existing systems so that the experience remains intuitive and cohesive.
As systems become more adaptive, Zhu believes the role of designers will increasingly shift toward shaping how products respond, learn, and communicate over time. This requires moving beyond static interface design and toward building flexible systems that can evolve alongside user needs, while still maintaining clarity and trust.
For Zhu, the goal remains consistent: to reduce friction, improve clarity, and help users make confident decisions. This approach reflects a broader effort to make complex systems more intuitive and accessible, regardless of the domain or technology involved.
