Tai Huang

Summary

A product designer contemplating at the intersection of AI, trust and human autonomy. Claude CLI is my default tool for creativity and efficiency — I prototype in code, deploy to Vercel, and designed KAYAK's first LLM-powered search (+14% revenue, +123% engagement) with a quiet insistence that users remain the ones making decisions, not the model. I led a 20-person design org into AI-assisted workflows (2x efficiency) not by evangelizing speed, but by showing that the craft gets richer when the tool knows its place. I want to build interfaces where intelligence serves without displacing the human at the center. Portfolio: xtai.me

Core Competencies
AI-Native Design & Prototyping Developer Tools UX Rapid Code-Based Prototyping Claude Code & AI Workflow Design Complex Workflow Design User Research & Empathy Design Systems Cross-Functional Collaboration
Experience
KAYAK (Booking Holdings) Jun 2025 — Present
Product Designer, AI  ·  Cambridge, MA
  • Sole designer on a 19-person AI team: designed KAYAK's first LLM-powered conversational search experience end-to-end, driving +14% booking revenue and +123% user engagement.
  • Shaped product direction through unmoderated usability testing and user interviews, using data-driven advocacy to consolidate a standalone AI chatbot into the core search platform with measurably higher satisfaction.
  • Led AI workflow transformation across a 20+ person design org by building a custom Claude Code skill-based workflow connecting design systems, Jira, and Figma — hosted vibe coding workshops and office hours to drive adoption, achieving 2x design efficiency.
  • Built reusable Claude Skills and custom GPTs with prompt engineering to automate user research synthesis, design standups, sprint reporting, and design system integration — reducing manual overhead across repeatable workflows.
  • Prototyped features in HTML/CSS/JS and deployed to Vercel for stakeholder review, enabling faster design-to-dev handoff and fewer interpretation errors versus static mockups.
KAYAK Jan 2023 — May 2025
Product Designer, Flights  ·  Cambridge, MA
  • Redesigned the Cheapflights product end-to-end across mobile and web, delivering +5% revenue on one of the company's highest profit-margin surfaces through incremental rollouts and A/B testing.
  • Led search, filtering, and monetization design for 8 million daily active users, collaborating cross-functionally with engineering, commercial, and SEO teams to ship iteratively.
  • Established component patterns and interaction standards across responsive breakpoints, contributing to a shared design system used by multiple product teams.
KAYAK Jun 2022 — Nov 2022
Product Design Intern  ·  Cambridge, MA
  • Designed the Trips Wishlist MVP — a travel exploration feature that increased conversion by restructuring information architecture and validating decisions through moderated usability testing.
  • Optimized the "Save to Trips" flow with micro-animation and interaction design, shipping a polished experience that increased revenue by 4%.
Slack Sep 2021 — Dec 2021
Product Design Intern  ·  San Francisco, CA
  • Led a 6-person research team studying college Slack adoption, delivering user interviews, surveys, and usability tests that informed the UX team's engagement strategy.
  • Synthesized qualitative and quantitative findings into actionable design recommendations for improving student onboarding and usability — experience directly relevant to understanding developer tool adoption patterns.
Realme Jun 2020 — Jan 2021
Product Manager  ·  Shenzhen, China
  • Shipped feature updates for 50M global users, including a battery settings redesign informed by forum feedback analysis that reduced cognitive load in a complex settings workflow.
  • Launched the Binge-Mode lock screen feature across design, engineering, and marketing, boosting adoption by 8% through rapid cross-functional iteration.
Disney Research Jun 2017 — Sep 2017
Research Intern  ·  Shanghai, China
  • Defined UX metrics for a spatial optimization algorithm, informing Disney Parks planning and infrastructure decisions through data-driven design.
  • Built a cross-disciplinary glossary and data visualizations to align a multi-disciplinary team (business, engineering, architecture, HCI) — early experience bridging technical and non-technical stakeholders.
Education
University of California, Berkeley — Master of Design, Human-Computer Interaction 2021 — 2022
Tongji University — Bachelor of Architecture 2015 — 2020
Skills
Design & Research: Figma, Design Systems, Interaction Design, Motion Design, Responsive/Mobile, Usability Testing, A/B Testing, User Interviews
Technical & AI: HTML/CSS/JavaScript, Claude Code, Cursor, Vercel, Git, Python, SQL, NLP/LLM Prompt Engineering