Xiaoyu Ye
Spatial & Healthcare UX Designer
PhD Candidate
Red Dot Award
Winner — 2025
Architecture PhD turned product designer. Led UX/UI design for Breezy, a connected pediatric breathing-therapy system — Bluetooth hardware paired with an iOS companion app — recognized with a 2025 Red Dot Design Award.
Spatial & XR Design
Architectural spatial systems, exhibit design, and the AR upgrade path for Breezy's hardware experience.
Explore spatial work Track 02Healthcare UX Systems
Telemetry, data visualization, and interaction design for a connected pediatric care device.
Explore healthcare workBreezy — Connected Breathing Therapy System
Bluetooth nebulizer hardware + iOS companion app for pediatric respiratory treatment adherence.
Lead Product & UX/UI Designer on a cross-functional team — directed the iOS app design end-to-end and the interaction logic bridging tactile hardware with software, from concept through Red Dot recognition in 2025.
62% of children under six show fear, crying, or resistance during standard nebulizer treatment, and clinical adherence stays below 50% as a result. Sessions run about 15 minutes — roughly three times a toddler's natural attention span — while caregivers have no way to read Bluetooth telemetry (oxygen concentration, breath strength) in real time.
Breezy reframes the clinical protocol as a four-phase logic — the doctor's prescription feeds a sensory-mapping engine that converts clinical targets into physical thresholds. Interchangeable magnetic modules — a windmill, a sailboat, a star — let a child choose and physically attach their own accessory, building autonomy into a routine that used to require restraint. A soft-silicone tactile LED matrix replaces the clinical control panel with a warm, non-medical surface that lights up in sequence to show progress as the child blows.
The iOS companion app mirrors the child's effort in real time — a windmill spins and a character's cheeks puff as they exhale — while oxygen concentration, breath strength, and session progress render as high-contrast data cards a caregiver can read at a glance. A weekly recovery view turns completed sessions into a visible streak.
Built for a dual-user interface: SF Pro Rounded across a three-tone warm palette (#EB706B, #FE926B, #FFC854), with a fixed type scale — 36pt bold titles down to 14pt data labels and 11pt captions — so the screen stays legible to a toddler and precise enough for a caregiver checking vitals mid-session. The tab architecture was scoped to accommodate future tele-health integrations.
Early sketches worked through the hose's flexible range and mask geometry alongside competing concepts for the breathing indicator — a radial dial, a wave pattern, a full dot matrix — before settling on the diamond-grid tactile surface that shipped.
2025 Red Dot Design Award — Winner. Validated cross-platform UI components and system architecture with AI-assisted rapid prototyping in Figma prior to engineering handoff.
From architectural systems to spatial computing
Breezy's physical form and the layout of its hardware components draw directly on training in architectural spatial systems — designing how a body interacts with an object in three dimensions, not just on a screen.
As a freelance exhibit designer at Shanghai Key Design Group (2023–2025), directed 2D/3D spatial mockups, floor plans, and presentation decks that translated complex proposal data into intuitive spatial narratives for cross-disciplinary stakeholders.
In progress: extending Breezy into an AR companion experience — spatial overlays for real-time telemetry during treatment sessions. This case study will be published as the work reaches prototype stage.
- ToolsRhino, AutoCAD, SketchUp, V-Ray
- MethodSpatial storytelling, floor plans & elevations, physical prototyping
- ContextPhD research, spatial & social evolution of the Shanghai French Concession
- Recognition2025 SGADC Singapore Art Design Competition — Bronze
Making clinical data legible to a five-year-old
Breezy's iOS app converts live Bluetooth telemetry — oxygen concentration, breath strength, session progress — into a visual system a child can read at a glance, without losing the precision a caregiver needs.
Every data point maps to a physical, collectible reward: completing a session earns a token (windmill, sailboat, star, rainbow), turning a compliance metric into something worth finishing.
Design and prototyping ran through Figma with AI-assisted workflows, validating user flows and component architecture before engineering handoff.
- ToolsFigma, prototyping, user journey mapping
- DataReal-time Bluetooth telemetry, clinical prescription rules
- UsersPediatric patients + caregivers, dual-literacy interface
- Result2025 Red Dot Design Award — Winner
Chronology
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2025
Lead Product & UX Designer — Breezy (Red Dot Award Winner)
End-to-end UX/UI for a connected healthcare IoT ecosystem, bridging tactile hardware with an iOS companion app. Translated real-time Bluetooth telemetry into accessible data visualizations.
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2023–2025
Freelance Designer — Shanghai Key Design Group Co., Ltd.
Visual storytelling and diagrammatic logic for high-stakes proposals; streamlined cross-functional design documentation across engineering and design teams; Python-based image processing for generative design iterations.
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2023–2027
PhD Candidate, Architecture Design — University of Nottingham, Ningbo
Research on the spatial and social evolution of the Shanghai French Concession; interpretive planning and archival research translated into spatial narratives.
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2020
Zhejiang Province Institute of Architectural Design
Spatial and project-data presentation for multidisciplinary engineering teams.
- PhD, Architecture DesignUniversity of Nottingham, Ningbo2023–2027
- MSc, Architectural & Urban DesignUniversity of Edinburgh2021–2022
- BEng, ArchitectureUniversity of Nottingham, Ningbo2017–2021
- DesignFigma, Rhino, AutoCAD, SketchUp, Adobe Creative Suite
- AI workflowMidjourney, DALL·E, Python automation, prompt engineering
- ResearchQualitative & visual research, cross-disciplinary analysis, academic writing
- CollaborationCross-functional design/eng teams, bilingual (English/Mandarin)