Jeffrey Yu / Product & Design / Duke University

The process behind the product, not just the polish.

I turn user interviews, hard constraints, and failed prototypes into product and design decisions a team can actually build.

View selected work Get in touch

5: People with vision loss in our focus groups
60+: Concepts screened down to one
4: Person team led
1: Design award

Selected work

Case studies that keep the process visible: what users said, what changed along the way, and why.

CALM — Cable-Actuated Locking Mechanism

Everyone we talked to had tried a monitor arm, and every one of them sagged. After our own printed arm snapped at 22.95 lb, we changed direction: instead of replacing the arm, make the arm people already owned hold position.

Design Award Winner

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Icarus

Every study app assumes you'll remember to open it. Icarus doesn't wait — it locks your distracting apps behind a few questions pulled from your own notes, so the moment you'd normally lose to scrolling turns into review instead.

Live on the App Store

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Betta Plants

What started as an eBay side hustle to fund my own aquarium became a real small business once I rebuilt it around value instead of price — and later a second attempt, as a content site, to see if the same plant knowledge could work as SEO instead of listings.

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Approach

Talk to the people with the problem

Interviews with the people who actually have the problem — patients, students, operators — not proxies for them.

Translate findings into requirements

Turn what people said into a spec a team can build against, and write down why, so it can be argued with later.

Prototype, validate, ship

Get something real in front of users, check it against what the research asked for, then go again.

About

I work across product and design at Duke University. Most of my work starts the same way: sitting down with the people who have the problem and asking enough questions that the requirements stop being guesses.

On my last project that meant running focus groups with people living with central vision loss, then leading a team of four through 60+ concepts and a pivot to a new design once a load test proved the first one wouldn't hold.

Get in touch

I'm open to product and design roles and conversations about research-driven product work.

jeffreyyu825@gmail.com