Yihan Dong

This is a layer of my design for technical usage.

Yihan Dong is an interdisciplinary designer and strategist in technology innovation, branding communication, and user experience. With research and collaboration, her projects blend design strategy, user connection, and engineering to create physical and digital products that look for sustainability and innovation. She is always ready for new proposals and design challenges.

Relevant experience

Fellow @The RSA (The royal society for arts, manufactures and commerce, 2020-Now)

Co-founder @Viwipe @Pleural (Healthcare innovation start-ups, 2022-Now)

Industrial Design Intern @vivo (Smartphones company, 2020)

Awards

Finalist, Healthcare Design, Mayor's Entrepreneur Competition 2023

Finalist, Healthcare Design, Venture Catalyst Challenge

Winner, Sustainable Design, Logitech & RCA Grand Challenge 2022

Winner, UX/UI Design, Westminster City Council & RCA Impact 2022

Winner, Industrial Design, K-Design Award 2022

Commended, Fashion Design, the UK student design award RSA 2019-20

Bronze Prize, UX/UI Design, A Design Award 2019

Education

MA/MSc Innovation Design Engineering - Royal College of Art and Imperial College London

B.A. Industrial and Product Design - Central Saint Martins, UAL

Knowing yourself is perhaps more important than creative output for designers. We all have different experiences, perspectives, and aesthetics. When catering to the market and user preferences, it is crucial to find out what you are good at and enjoy.

The past two years at IDE have been filled with interdisciplinary collaboration and innovation, and I have gained knowledge of engineering, life science, and interaction. Through constant exploration of new fields and self-exploration, I gradually discovered my passion for healthcare design and feminist research. Seeing myself as a designer is slowly becoming clear to me.

Driven by collaborative ventures with biology-related labs, I unveiled the captivating fusion of life science and industrial design. Inspired, I founded a studio to document and explore the principles of biological design, medical innovation, and cross-disciplinary collaboration. My aim is to venture into unexplored territories, bridging disciplines with boundless creativity and problem-solving.

Please take a look at my projects to get a better sense of who I am and what innovators like me are seeking. I am always ready for new design challenges. Please feel free to contact me. Thanks for your time!

Viwipe, A Women-Centric HPV Self-Test

Viwipe Test Kit

Viwipe, Women-Centric HPV Self-Tests

Viwipe is the world's first non-invasive, low-cost, paper-based cervical pre-screening solution empowering young women to prevent cervical cancer through HPV self-tests. By utilizing menstrual blood and dried blood spot technology, Viwipe offers an accurate and convenient alternative to traditional smear tests, overcoming barriers of embarrassment and fear.

Viwipe Community Engagement

Viwipe, Community-Focus Intervention

Cervical cancer is a significant threat, causing the deaths of 342,000 women annually and ranking as the fourth leading cause of death. Among young women, it is the most prevalent cancer. Unfortunately, nearly half of them postpone or avoid smear tests due to embarrassment and fear.

Viwipe addresses this challenge by offering free, non-invasive self-tests near universities and schools, conveniently located alongside free period products. The branding efforts focus on fostering community engagement and promoting sexual education to encourage participation.

Viwipe Technology

Viwipe, Overlooked Technology Innovation

Menstrual blood contains valuable biological markers that have been overlooked. The traditional dried blood spots (DBS) method has been deemed outdated and lacking innovation. However, Viwipe has innovatively harnessed the potential of menstrual blood and the underestimated DBS technique through collaboration among users, designers, and scientists. The result is the development of accurate self-tests with broader applications in menstrual blood testing.

Viwipe Communication

Viwipe, Communication Design

Viwipe offers a user-centric communication design approach that focuses on the crucial registration and result communication touchpoints in self-test validation. The aim is to ensure a seamless connection between user information and test numbers. The communication strategy is designed to encourage young women with questionable test results to consider smear tests as the next step.

In Collaboration with:

Technology Supporter: Dr Kenny Malpartida Cardenas at Imperial College London

Dr Kenny, a research associate within the Faculty of Medicine's Department of Infectious Disease, specializes in the extraction of dried blood spots and the implementation of LAMP processing methods. Her valuable expertise contributes to the essential technology validation of this project.

Decibel: Making the invisible visible – Grand Challenge Winner 2022 Making the invisible visible, A nature-based solution against the invisible pollutant in the ocean – Sound. It’s an invisible threat, but noise pollution is a major and deadly threat to ocean wildlife.

Pleural: Smart Airway Clearance Solution – Mayor's Entrepreneur Finalist Pleural is the first smart airway clearance device for mucus-related respiratory conditions that empower users to perform chest physiotherapy autonomously, providing them with immediate relief from breathlessness whilst reducing the risk of infection. Intelligent machine learning provides users with personalised therapy to clear their airways, and to clear up any uncertainty towards the progression of their lung condition.