Vannessa Wong Email & Phone Number

New York, United States

Ithaca, New York, United States

• Develop website rebranding with 1000+ users via audits + re-imagining the application page. With standard design practice, focused on new features that foster equitable recruitment processes and accessible resource.
• Attending weekly critique groups to receive and implement feedback, practicing design justification.
• Volunteered at workshops for young students in the Tompkins Library in Ithaca to teach Figma basics.
• Practiced creating components, implementing design systems, and designing hi-fi mockups.
• User testing with 20+ students for re-iteration practices.
• Contributing to further DTI's DEI mission by participating in recruitment event curation and professional development of students with different backgrounds and interests in software,

Ithaca, NY

• Organizing 15+ online and physical resources to compile an annotated bibliography about technical writing, game design workflow, engineering communications, team culture development and more.
• Compiling experiences, interview takeaways and results from curriculum experiments in the Spring 2024 semester. Consolidating literature review and course content collected from different university classes.
• Synthesizing hypotheses, conclusions and preparing incoming Teaching Assistants to lead Project Management and resolve conflict between teams for future semesters.
• Composition to be submitted to the IEEE conference in 2025.

• Collaborated closely with the Introduction to Games Design teaching team to facilitate the INFO3152 course and improve the class environment.
• Led workshops with outside organizations to build stronger connections within the GDIAC (Game Design Initiative at Cornell) to emulate industry game design playtesting and stakeholder presentations.
• Reviewed papers submitted by students about engineering documentation and presentation practice.
• Developed strong relations with student teams to ensure healthy working environments.
• Experimented and tested new material (Canvas modules, CATMEs, etc.) in the ENGRC course redesign.

• Partnered with 1 other researcher + faculty advisor to re-create course design for the spring semester, focusing on improving team management, course flow, feedback cycles and design support in game development.
• Conducted affinity mapping to document trends and patterns in responses and experiences within the student and industry populations.
• Created agendas, documented minutes and attended weekly meetings to synthesize research.
• Interviewed 10+ industry leaders and 12+ student teams, synthesizing their leadership experience.

Ithaca, New York, United States

• Continuing to build on the projects initiated last year to improve Figma workshops, design critique discussion sections and touch more on design branding and personal portfolios in lectures.
• Support the design education of 100+ students of all backgrounds to learn design.
• Provided edits and suggestions for documentation, user research synthesis reports + design justifications for quality assurance in student's projects, emphasizing the need for accurate reporting.

Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States

• Build on top of Inquirer's mobile apps, focusing on creating sustainable business for local journalism.
• Collaborate with a team of product managers, designers and engineers.
• Learn and practiced product management principles by hypothesizing and planning testing for new product initiatves in 2025 through whiteboarding on Miro, synthesizing current project trends and the current progress of.
• Interviewed 20+ Philadelphians in-person to gauge the effectiveness of the Inquirer app and justifying hypotheses for revamping the Onboarding Feature.
• Created presentations to demonstrate findings, condense research and create action points to pivot the project from planning to execution.
• Utilizing Jira to create and track tickets for research and design phases in order to revitalize the Onboarding Feature of the app.

Ithaca, New York, United States

• Curated and created new presentations and lectures surrounding design-business best practices like storytelling, design justification + communication, designer-developer handoff and presentation skills.
• Held weekly office hours to help navigate paired semester projects about different people problems.
• Co-created the first iteration of critique groups to start building student's mindset for feedback.
• Initiated a 1-1 system to foster more personalized learning catered for different beginner designers.
• Documented handoffs for future educators, detailing reports for improvements based on observations.

Ithaca, New York, United States

• Coordinated with the New Member Education (NME) team of 4 to build a curriculum surrounding design concepts: ideation, data analysis, personas and career development skills to build their design career.
• Mentored students about career skills like cold emailing, cover letters, interview practice, technical interview practice, resume polish and portfolio progress.
• Lectured on UX Writing using flows from Nike's Nike by You brand and Slack's UX writing practices.
• Strengthened the design community by organizing socials for new members.
• Sifted through 70+ applicants for the club, engaging in the interviewing and recruitment process.

Ithaca, NY

• Engaged students through multiple activities, both personal and professional to cultivate healthy work-life balance.
• Co-mentored 3 underclassmen students about Cornell's engineering and design culture.

• Initiated the first cohort of multiple Figma workshops with a team of 5+ students under Professor Gilly Leshed to teach Figma basics, prototyping and plugins to 70+ students for semester-long group projects.
• Reviewed HCI, design processes + heuristic evaluations to ensure quality mentorship.
• Held office hours, corresponded + supported students who struggled with design concepts.
• Contributed to a lecture on design critiquing for the final stretch of the semester.
• Reviewed documentation, user research synthesis reports + design justifications for quality assurance.

• Worked with a team of 6 writers in the Interactive Writing Circle of varying experiences to write individual interaction fiction games online under a mentor on Texturewriter.
• Improved writing skill by enhancing selective word choice and scene development techniques.
• Refined narrative design skills through my first project, learning dialogue synthesis and player choice.
• Most stories were sent to IFComp, or the 2023 Interactive Fiction Competition.You can play my game here:https://texturewriter.com/play/vann_essa/ecnarodra/info

• Familiarize myself with visual design, inclusive design, storytelling, UX and UXR concepts at an enterprise-scale in an 8 week program. Created the first IBM to student portfolio review community.
• Engaged and networked with 5 cohorts of 500+ students in total and 10+ IBMer mentors.
• Contributed to design critiques, working closely with a team of 10 under an IBM Design coach.
• Developed foundational career skills by facilitating multiple portfolio and personal brand reflections.
• Collaborated live with other designers through the Mural software, presenting my design decisions.My summer project was on creating a book design and possible app about improving the Accelerate program and providing.

Ithaca, New York, United States

• Iterated screens, logo, landing and login page with two other designers and a PM for an incoming startup e-commerce platform that focused on fashion retailers called Jur.
• Focused on the saving feature and the home page branding of the website.
• Iterated on different saving animation micro-interactions to allow user to understand Jur's user flows.
• Worked with a team of 2 other designers to create the mockups for the visual design.
• Collaborated with leads and stakeholders for biweekly standups, implementing their design feedback.

• Co-managed a team of 8 with bi-weekly deliverables, intertwining and maintaining communication between designers, artists and programmers for our metroidvania x platformer game, BubbleBound.
• Employed technical writing skills by reviewing game documentation drafts, manuals and specifications.
• Organized branding and advertising material through an animated trailer.
• Co-conceptualized the game manual, art assets, character story design and obstacles in the game.
• Managed conflict, particularly addressing miscommunication about game feature implementations.

• Sought out children’s education opportunities centered around disabled students to improve turnover rate by curating informed research for our audience as a mathematics learning app.
• Documented and authored 10+ detailed reports on summer events and programs around NYC.
• Facilitated process improvement for outreach and attended staff meetings for outreach operations.
• Connected with 20+ summer school programs, recruiting 10+ for further collaboration with AI-Learners.
• Playtested and critiqued 10+ children's games on the AI-Learner's platform.
• Organized and initiated a long term partnership with the New York Public Library and its 92 locations.

Ithaca, New York, United States

• Coordinated with a team of 11 to organize the spring semester showcase featuring architectural, visual, engineering, seismic, entertainment and brand design at Cornell University.
• Fostered community engagement for the showcase between 20+ different organizations on campus.
• Corresponded with 20+ student leaders about participation, project features and arrival times.
• Arranged the showcase for optimal presentation to allow for seamless foot traffic at all booths.

• Collaborated with Adaptive Rentals, a real-estate company in Ithaca that secures housing and synthesizes housing resources to the Cornell student body under the Praxis Brand Consulting branch.
• Consulted early-stage research and in a team of 8
• Developed mockups and prototypes for mobile and website mediums for their up-and-coming brand.
• Focused on the housing option showcasing feature and iterated on housing selection interfaces.
• Communicated ideas and designs and deign rationale backed by research to stakeholders for critique.

• Created 10+ web and app design mockups for a photography company using Figma.
• Rapidly prototyped multiple user flows for a prospective mobile app looking to increase user traffic and improve reservation experience to optimize the photography booking process.

Remote

• Collaborated with programmers and designers for both website and app development. Attended and led meetings twice a week for critiques on designs as ensuring smooth, timely development of features.
• Managed the progress of the website development team of 10+ junior develops and designers.
• Organized process improvement through Trello, Notion, G-Suite.
• Created weekly presentations about design team updates and requests from interdisciplinary teams.
• Facilitated weekly standups and biweekly sprint reviews to the team to mimic industry practices. SciQuel is a part of the Harvard Innovation Labs venture program. You can find the work-in-progress here.

• Designed mockups for a web and mobile app that simplifies scientific research into digestible articles for all kinds of audiences and personas with varying scientific backgrounds.
• Focused on customizing study preferences, iterating on flashcard, annotation + article saving features.
• Contributed to presenting ideas and critiquing other designs in a design team of 10+ design students.
• Spearheaded the synthesizing process of design work to achieve goals faster and in a timely manner.
• Leveraged Figma to create user personalization pages and profile pages for mobile uses.

Ithaca, New York, United States

• Authored a case study about increasing Apple Store's user traffic and introducing mood boards and new profile settings, reimagining the app's original intents.
• Developed "Deja-Brew", a social app that connects students by their favorite coffee orders and organizes coffee chats, as the sole designer with 4 software developers in a two week hack challenge.
• Acquired rapid prototype and mockup skills by implementing the basic design process and Figma skills.

Ithaca

• Guided 20+ middle school students to learn Javascript through the Splash!at Cornell program by teaching them how to build a snow-scape and other winter-inspired drawings.

Ithaca, New York, United States

• Collaborated with a team of 3 product designers and 1 project manager to develop a tentative app about improving freshman experience in Cornell and exposing students to local Ithacan attractions.
• Conducted 5+ user interviews to gather key requirements for Cornell underclassmen personas.
• Developed brand + UI kits to create a playful yet instructive brand voice, backed by interview analyses.
• Ensured successful user interaction via user testing.
• Presented final prototypes in a design showcase to receive feedback and critique from other designers.

Bachelor Of Arts - Ba, Information Science, Information Science/Studies

Activities and Societies: Cornell Lion Dance (CLD), Design Consulting at Cornell (DCC), Women In Computing at Cornell (WICC), Development.

Information Science (Is)

Activities and Societies: Officially entered the Cornell Bowers CIS department as an Information Science major. (2023)

Medical Science

Activities and Societies: Student Government, Unicef Club, Asian Festival, Student Leadership Team, Archon National Honors Society, Arista.

Education record

Took a fall semester, early college-career course on environmental sustainability.