Zhixian Xu is a UX designer in telehealth, focused on enhancing healthcare efficiency. Her passion for design grew from a fascination with how systems shape behavior\u2014how small interactions impact decisions, emotions, and lives. With projects like Aurava: The Future of Collective Grief Healing, she explores design’s power to shape human experience.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Q1. Congratulations on winning the NY Product Design Awards! Can you introduce yourself and share about what inspired you to pursue design as a career?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n I\u2019m a UX designer specializing in telehealth, with a strong focus on improving the experience and efficiency of healthcare providers. My journey into design was sparked by an early fascination with the way systems shape human behavior\u2014how the smallest interaction can influence a decision, a feeling, or even a life.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Over time, I became deeply interested in the healthcare space, not only because of its complexity, but also because of its urgency. I realized how much outdated workflows, fragmented tools, and emotional fatigue impact clinicians and patients alike. That\u2019s what continues to drive me: the belief that thoughtful design can become a form of care\u2014helping to reduce friction, amplify clarity, and ultimately bring humanity back into healthcare systems.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Design, to me, is never just about aesthetics or usability\u2014it’s about responsibility, and having the tools to change how people experience moments that really matter.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Q2. What does being recognized in the NY Product Design Awards mean to you?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Winning in the NY Product Design Awards is incredibly meaningful to me\u2014not just as a recognition of the work itself, but as an affirmation of why the work matters. The award\u2019s focus on thoughtful, future-facing design aligns deeply with what I hope to contribute as a designer: building systems that not only function well, but resonate with real human needs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n To have a speculative healthcare \/ social-cultural design concept like Aurava recognized on this stage tells me that design can still ask difficult questions, challenge assumptions, and hold space for emotional complexity\u2014especially in fields like grief, healing, and collective trauma.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It\u2019s also a reminder that behind every interface is a person, and behind every problem is a system we have the power to improve. This award gives me the momentum to keep designing in ways that are both bold and grounded.<\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/p>\n\n\n\n Q3. How has this achievement impacted your career, team, or agency, and what opportunities has it brought so far?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n The award has brought more visibility to my work in speculative and healthcare design, which has opened up new conversations with collaborators, researchers, and even people outside the traditional design community.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Since Aurava deals with themes like grief, memory, and collective healing, the recognition also gave the project a kind of validation\u2014that emotional experiences are worth designing for, and that systems supporting them can be just as critical as tools for diagnosis or treatment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Personally, it pushed me to think more seriously about how to carry ideas like this forward\u2014not just as one-off concept pieces, but as part of a longer design journey. It\u2019s made me more intentional about bridging experimentation and impact.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Q4. What role does experimentation play in your creative process? Can you share an example?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Experimentation is core to how I work\u2014especially when the goal is to design for things that don\u2019t have clear precedents. With Aurava, I had to explore how grief might be translated into spatial experiences, AR interactions, and even ritual gestures. That meant stepping beyond typical UX flows and experimenting with symbolism, ceremony, and data visualization as forms of emotional communication.<\/p>\n\n\n\n One example: I used a real-time “grief heatmap” to reflect collective emotional intensity, which meant designing an interface that didn\u2019t just show information, but felt alive. That required combining speculative UI thinking with emotional pattern modeling\u2014something that isn\u2019t standard in most product design toolkits.<\/p>\n\n\n\n These kinds of experiments help me push past conventional frames of \u201cwhat design should do\u201d and into the question of \u201cwhat design could hold space for.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Q5. What’s the most unusual source of inspiration you’ve ever drawn from for a project?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n During the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic, I started noticing something quietly powerful: when prominent figures\u2014especially healthcare workers\u2014passed away, people would spontaneously gather online to share stories, leave messages, or even hold digital memorials.<\/p>\n\n\n\n We were physically isolated, but emotionally bound together by a shared trauma. In that moment, I saw a strange contradiction: people grieving collectively, yet alone\u2014mediated by screens, scrolls, and silence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n That experience stayed with me. It made me wonder: what could collective grief look like in an age shaped by intelligent systems and virtual spaces? Could we design environments that support emotional presence, even in absence?<\/p>\n\n\n\n That was the seed of Aurava. The project is my attempt to explore whether mourning\u2014often seen as private\u2014could become a shared, healing experience in digital form.<\/p>\n\n\n\nAurava: The Future of Collective Grief Healing<\/a><\/h6>\n\n\n\n