I'm May Sun,
I lead and design delightful experiences

Award-winning designer, dedicated to solving business challenges by designing technologies; consistently thrives in fast-paced environments; takes pleasure in working closely with product managers, engineers, stakeholders, and startup CEOs; leading initiatives with mindset of bringing intuitive and creative solutions; highly motivated to push my product to next level; hosted workshops and meetings to focus stakeholders on business and design objectives with user research results to understand user needs; collaborate with product managers to put high-level strategies into actionable roadmaps with improvement on user experience based on data; work with engineers to bridge design patterns with backend data structures towards overall technology direction.

Background

Marquee - Goldman Sachs

Vice President - product design lead & design manager, currently responsible for leading new initiatives, setting up vision for design, and optimizing user experiences.

Startups - May Sun Design Studio

Run May Sun Design Studio - working with early stage startups to build up product vision. I started with a remit of demonstrating the value of an agile process within the companies via rapid iteration on various products. The startups and I decided what to work on based on solid hypotheses. My most successful ventures include CoFoundersLab, 1000 Angels, and Koyfin.

Design major - MFA & BFA

I attended the Products of Design program from the School of Visual Arts for my master’s degree. I received an MBA majoring in Product Design from China Central Academy and Fine Arts.

More about me

My Strongest Suites

1. Leadership and Team Building

I bring out the best in other people and can make other people’s ideas better, especially when facilitating small groups. I work very fast and love to share very early, and am not rigid or dogmatic. I am good at pushing teams to think beyond their existing thinking. I excel when working strategically on open ended and ambiguous things.

2. Complex Problem Solving

I thrive in the presence of complexity when interaction is in the mix of human behaviors and data. I leverage research as my entry, dive into the problem areas, and bring everyone together to align the vision and goals.

3. Cross-Platform Solutions

I believe that good solutions should be accessible through any devices users choose to use. My current users are historically a very desktop-focused group. As remote work peaks in the financial world, mobile offerings are becoming more important for my users.

Trading system user journey

What I do when I'm not working?

1. Mentoring

I have been involved in many organizations, such as Built by Girls, Girls Who Code, and Columbia Girls in STEM, where I engage in mentoring the next generation of women in tech.

2. Talks

My talks mainly focus on women’s empowerment or design thinking, or a combination of the two. I had the honor to give a talk at the Goldman Sachs Women Engineering Conference in 2019 and multiple design thinking talks at Product Classroom and Columbia Girls in STEM.

Design talk

Columbia Girls in STEM - Startup Building Workshop

How do I practice my creativity?

1. Workshops

I have designed, run, and evaluated countless creative, ideation, and principles-based workshops for many teams. Whether to find common ground, break through tricky problems, or define ways of working, collaborative workshops form the basis of my design process.

2. Cross-Function Collaboration

To keep sharpening my creative edge, I give some of my time to small business brainstorming sessions to foster innovative ideas. I enjoy finding startups’ market fit, enabling them to reach the right audience and crafting meaningful experiences for testing.

3. Visual Arts

Given my visual arts background, I have created many works of art ranging from sculptures to digital fabrications and drawings. I believe art and design are highly connected and mutually influence each other. My design craft has drawn from many inspirational artists, such as Anish Cooper, Nairy Baghramian, and Carmen Herrera.

Collaborate with small businesses

'Who We Are - as a design team' workshop

Makeup Machine - Collected by Central Academy of Fine Arts Museum

I'm May Sun,I lead and design delightful experiences