Szu-Yu (Cyn) Liu, Ph.D. Email & Phone Number

Redmond, Washington, United States

• Led high-impact research for 6+ Azure hybrid cloud and edge products across procurement, deployment, management, and troubleshooting; achieving ~85% recommendation implementation to guide strategy, drive adoption, and.
• Championed cross-organizational impact and UX maturity by leading research prioritization workshops, product roundtables, and executive strategy discussions, collaborations across product, engineering, marketing, and.
• Mentored and grew the team from 6 to 12 members, coaching early-career researchers, designers, and PMs, and leading cross-organization university outreach, career transition programs, and learning objectives, fostering.
• Boosted team productivity and efficiency by creating tools such as Azure UX onboarding bootcamp modules, edge customer recruitment channels, stakeholder maps, and research prioritization template.

Irvine, California, United States

• Awarded a $253,800 NSF Computing Innovation Fellow grant, recognizing 59 high-achieving PhDs in Computing nationwide.
• Received 9 outstanding reviews at top HCI conferences (CHI, TEI), invited as a guest speaker at international renowned R1 universities and HCI conferences, and served twice as an Associate Chair at CHI and DIS program.

Bloomington, Indiana Area

• Conducted ethnography, interviews, contextual inquiries, and what-if scenarios on experimental farming, environmental sensing, and bottom-up innovation to uncover opportunities for ecological design—resulting in 6+.
• Collaborated with engineers and researchers to build Ode to Soil, a sensor that tracks soil conditions and displays data via music to encourage embodied engagement with nature and to promote environmental sustainability.
• Led a team of 5 to conduct research through design activities that support participation of nontraditional/nonhuman stakeholders (e.g., animals, plants, microbes) in creative practices to democratize design and research.
• Taught three M.S. level courses in HCI/Design; mentored three junior graduate students and three undergraduate researchers on field studies and physical computing.
• Invited to serve at conference technical program committees (CHI ’21, CHI ’20, DIS ‘19) and organizing committees (DIS’19, TEI ’19); invited to review for 7 top-tier conferences.

Greater Seattle Area

• Led and delivered a mixed-method study (27 interviews and 1000+ survey responses) within 3 weeks to pioneer untouched product areas for co-located interactions using Snapchat app; presented findings to CTO and R&D leads.
• Translated UX insights into design guidelines that led to the development of “Project IRL,” a suite of 7 Snapchat in-app AR games and lenses deployed in Q4 2020 - Q1 2021 that leverages physicality to enhance in-person.

Redmond

• Led user studies (12 cognitive mapping sessions, 12 in-depth interviews, 2 community co-design workshops) to deploy Project Eclipse, a low cost, low powered air pollution sensing platform that increases the granularity.
• Created a cognitive mapping toolkit to externalize the implicit perceptions and hypothesis people have with the air and air pollution, as well as identifying design opportunities for mitigating the limitation of.
• Collaborated closely with local governments, community members, and in-house R&D teams to create a data sonification model that increases data legibility and promotes stakeholder engagement; work published at DIS ‘20.

Taipei City, Taiwan

• Owned and executed 20+ strategic, tactical, and evaluative studies ranging from user studies, trend analysis, stakeholder co-design workshops, and usability testing.
• Laid out 10-year strategy roadmaps for mobile imaging and smart projection technologies that are currently being implemented in multiple product lines.
• Conducted user research and presented to CEO, CTO, and CFO—led to the launch of multiple hardware and software products, including ASUS 360° (panorama camera) and Zenbo (companion robot).
• Developed and embedded research templates in cross-functional teams to foster a collaborative research culture and advocate user-centered design thinking.

Taipei City, Taiwan

• Designed the award-winning Google On-Hub router and VivoMini PC; involved in the entire product development process from ideation and prototyping to mass production.
• Collaborated closely with project managers, researchers, designers, software/hardwareengineers on 5 exploratory and tactical projects: ranging from PC and monitor to robot.

Taipei City, Taiwan

• Assisted with 3D prototyping to study load-bearing structure using sheet material; conducted anthropological fieldwork to identify strategies for improving user experiences in design.

Pasadena, CA

• Mentored junior design students on free-hand sketching techniques and offered individual critiques on visual communication projects.

Taipei, Taiwan

• Conducted interviews with design practitioners to investigate the mechanisms of creativity.

Doctor Of Philosophy - Phd, Human Computer Interaction

Master Of Science - Ms, Human Computer Interaction, Gpa 4.0

Master Of Design, Product Innovation

Full-Time Endowed Scholarship Student, Product Design

Published on Dean's list

Bachelor Of Design, Industrial And Commercial Design

Honored as class valedictorian

International Exchange Student, Product Design

Published on Dean's list