Overview
UX Designer
UX Designer at Meitu, a Chinese tech company with 450M+ monthly active users across 23 apps. Worked across multiple teams spanning the Palo Alto, LA, and Xiamen offices in a series of extreme sprints, primarily under Creative Director Evelyn Sun, with all teams reporting to CEO Frank Fu.
Key Outcomes
- Co-designed AR try-on for Makeup+ that became the #1 earning feature across all 23 apps
- Trained the Xiamen engineering team on global UX research methods, including qualitative usability testing and quantitative analysis frameworks
- Identified that ML models required retraining for diverse eye shapes and skin tones to perform accurately across global markets
Approach
Conducted cross-market research that revealed fundamentally different user motivations by region. Western users gravitated toward entertainment filters and features that enhanced maturity and angular facial structure, while Eastern users preferred status-signaling filters and features that emphasised youthfulness and softer facial contours. Preferred styles, filter choices, and purchase motivations all diverged by market. Used these insights to reduce friction in the purchase journey.
Impact
The research reframed how the company approached localisation, shifting from surface-level translation to structurally different product strategies per region, including for the marketing teams. The AR commerce feature unlocked global purchasing power and became the top revenue driver across Meitu's entire app portfolio.
