Yanjiao Li

Yanjiao’s research interests are Placemaking, Community, Nature, and Sustainability.

With 6-year design learning and practice, her curiosity and solid design foundation have guided her to conduct many multidisciplinary projects that relate to space and human behaviours across industries. In 2020, as a design student, she figured out new profit opportunities that can help to replace animal performance by observing visitors’ behaviours and mapping out their routes in an entertainment zoo. In 2021-2022, as a UX designer, based on understanding consumers' behaviours in the physical store and the digital platform, she improved consumers’ perception of laundry service and increased the NPS by 4.2 by designing digital interfaces and the standardization of promotional materials. In 2023, with RCA classmates from different disciplines, she regenerated the local economy and communities in Glasgow by bringing artists together and reusing the historical vacant space.

This year, with stronger system thinking, and a passion to foster a fairer society, she focuses on the research area that combines placemaking, community, and nature. WelComm is her first project that designs for green space equality with the place-based method, aiming to empower everyone with equal benefits from nature. During the process, she sees herself as one of the community members, she grows her understanding of the issue and co-creates with local residents and organizations.