ENTRY 01 · UX / UI
TastePICK Coffee
Tasting without the decision fatigue. A social layer for coffee: discover what others drink, build your own recipe, then let a surprise wheel choose for you in public.
UX / UIInteractive screen
01 — About
I treat interaction as
the design of relationships.
Don't speak for people. Let them speak first.
I started in product design at Tianjin University of Science and Technology (GPA 3.71/5.0) — furniture, a farm vehicle compartment, digital-twin models, one design patent. At Southampton I moved to communication design, and my attention shifted from "does it work" to "who is being represented".
A coffee app, a self-service health booth, a game about Indigenous medicine, a VR piece on vanity, a counter-map of Chongqing, urban ants, an X-ray for museum objects. Wide range, one method: find where someone is stuck, then translate that into something design can actually change.
The current thread is participatory design. London Liming — made with Lime and the youth charity Boyz 2 Men across three London boroughs — asks the young men who ride to author their own image. The paper is accepted at the Journal of Technology Innovation and Engineering.
Material Study / 001
“Design isn't making the decision
for someone. It's handing it back.”
Undergraduate projects
02 — BA Projects / Product & Interaction
ENTRY 02 · PRODUCT + EXPERIENCE
Private Warehouse
The shame of a gynaecology exam isn't the exam. A self-service booth inside a community hospital that makes privacy, safety and hygiene hold at the same time.
Women's healthService touchpoints
ENTRY 03 · GAME / UX
Journey to the Pill of Heaven
A game about Aboriginal healing: gathering, meditation, purification. You understand the practice by doing it, not by being told about it.
Game designCultural narrative
ENTRY 04 · VR EXPERIENCE
The End of Vanity
A walk to the end of vanity, in VR. No lecture — three choices and their consequences, until the room shows you what “face” actually costs.
VRSpatial narrative
Postgraduate projects
03 — MA Projects / Communication Design
FIG 03.1 / LIME · HACKNEY, LAMBETH, SOUTHWARK
Case 03.1 · MA Major Project · 2025—2026
London Liming:
a display the boys wrote themselves
A dumped shared bike reads as “the neighbourhood is going down”. This project doesn't argue with that. It hands the pen over: young riders author their own portrait, in public. Made with Lime and the youth charity Boyz 2 Men across Hackney, Lambeth and Southwark.
Participatory designLime × Boyz 2 MenPaper accepted
Open the paper ↗
ENTRY 05 · COUNTER-MAPPING
Dimension Breach
A map for a city that refuses to be flat. Chongqing is navigated by systems built for a plane; this counter-map is drawn for the people who climb it every day.
CartographyCritical design
ENTRY 06 · MORE-THAN-HUMAN
Interactions with Non-humans
Ants navigate by pheromone trails our surfaces keep erasing. A design study of a user who is not human, in a city that was never planned for them.
Non-human usersField research
ENTRY 07 · VISUAL RESEARCH
Making the Invisible Visible
An atlas of handwritten notes — the signals we leave on walls, desks and classroom surfaces without ever meaning to communicate.
AtlasObservation
ENTRY 08 · SPECULATIVE
Sell the Earth™
EARTH+™, 2041. A deployed environmental access system that meters who gets to be outside — six touchpoints, one policy made visible.
SpeculativeSystems
ENTRY 09 · SELF-TRACKING
The Quantitative Self
One week of tracking: social media, study, steps, sleep. What the numbers say that the routine quietly hides.
Self-trackingData viz
ENTRY 10 · MUSEUM INTERFACE
X-ray the Invisible
A museum interface that scans an object's hidden layers — memory, power, identity — and shows what the wall label leaves out.
Interaction designExhibition
Publication
04 — Publication
London Liming: An Illustrated Report on a Public Social Display Co-Designed with Lime, Boyz2Men and Boys in London Boroughs
Nan Liu · Sole author · Journal of Technology Innovation and Engineering · Accepted
2026
Open PDF↗
Abstract This article presents London Liming, a proposed co-designed public social display in Hackney, Lambeth and Southwark developed in relation to Lime and the youth charity Boyz 2 Men. It examines how participatory design can challenge stigmatising readings of shared bicycles and young male riders through peer-authored portraits, reversible bicycle wraps, public seating and transparent data notices.
Drawing on semiotics, site-specific and participatory art, and scholarship on mobility justice, the paper describes a design process centred on youth authorship rather than externally imposed representation. The article offers a practice-based design proposition: the workshops and pilot are proposals rather than completed interventions, and their social effects remain to be evaluated.
Keywords participatory design · public display · urban mobility · youth representation · design ethics
Tap to read the abstract, tap again to close
05 — Final Project · In progress
Making participation
the work itself
The MA final project is in progress, but the direction has settled: if participatory design is not only a method for collecting opinions, but the form of the work itself — what does that actually look like? In London Liming I was the facilitator. This time I want the distribution of authorship, credit and veto to be the visible structure.
Three lines are open. First, turning the workshop process into a reusable consent toolkit — so participants can withdraw, amend and refuse. Second, treating the visibility of a public display as a variable rather than a conclusion. Third, evaluation: how the ownership of an outcome after participation is actually recorded.
If participants hold a veto, can the result still be called “my work”?
Interaction study / resistance
0.0 N
Drag it — let go and it comes back·Arrow keys to adjust, Enter to reset
06 — Curriculum Vitae
CV.
A one-page summary below — open the original PDF for everything
Education
University of SouthamptonMA Communication Design
Tianjin University of Science and TechnologyBA Product Design · GPA 3.71/5.0
Research
London Liming · public social displayLead researcher with Lime and Boyz 2 Men; paper accepted
Modular furniture for small homesPrincipal researcher · BA thesis · advisor Prof. Shijian Cang
Farm support vehicle compartmentKey contributor · design patent CN309384816S
Dongfeng Honda digital-twin 3D configurationMain investigator · Bronze Award, 9th “Internet+” Competition
Experience
Yuxin Advertising Production CenterAdvertising design and production, concept through installation
Longting District Cultural BureauBrand VI system; key visual, icons, DM brochures, print production
Honours
- China Creative Challenges Contest · Second Prize2025.08
- China Creative Packaging Design Competition · Third Prize2024.08
- 9th China International “Internet+” Competition · Bronze Award2023.08
- Henan Province Outstanding Youth Volunteer2022.11
Skills
- ResearchSemi-structured interviews · survey design · usability testing · co-design workshops · literature review
- DesignProduct form · service flows · interface and interaction prototypes · spatial narrative
- Making3D modelling and rendering · CAD drawing · graphic and brand collateral
- LanguageChinese (native) · English (academic writing, workshop facilitation)
Contact
- 13137837608@163.com
- +86 131 3783 7608
- Southampton, UK / Tianjin