Info

Nicci Yin
(she/her)

I am a designer and artist exploring embodied interfaces and more playful and collaborative applications of technology. This is an index of selected projects.

As an interaction designer I have 7+ years experience, most recently working on XR and AI at Meta Reality Labs. My full CV is here.

Feel free to email me and see what I'm up to on Instagram or Are.na.

Projects

Writing with Drawing

2025

An interactive "drawing" that reveals verses of a Python-generated poem as the shapes are moved around, and rewrites the original poem through the act of drawing (peep the console log!).

Alternative Interfaces (WIP)

2025–

Ongoing research—follow along my board here.

Media Design Practices Website

2020

Website and information architecture redesign for Media Design Practices Graduate Department at ArtCenter. I worked with Prudence Rees-Lee who developed the site.

A+A+A

2020

A+A+A is a women-led, multidisciplinary design studio committed to making places more inclusive, collaborative, and joyful. They wanted a lightweight Squarespace website to manage their portfolio and client work.

Brooks Bra Finder

2019

A responsive browser-based experience for discovering Brooks Run Bras based on best match. I was freelancing under Shore and worked on UX design and testing, visual design, and creative direction of assets.

10^-1 10^0 10^1 10^2

2019

A series of drawings created for the March 2019 issue of the Pacifica Literary Review upon invitation; a collaboration between two friends and Google Drive; a collection of scenes about scales of water.

Surface Tension

2017–2018

A graduate research project uses diverse design approaches to explore how scanning, photogrammetry, and touchscreen interactions mediate our relationship between bodies and interfaces.

Pivot Points

2017

Pivot Points is a speculative proposal for how to design social interactions through shared virtual assets in MR. Users scan in objects from "real reality" that is shareable in VR and connects spaces together. Developed with Nan Tsai.

Animistic Collaborators

2017

A collection of ideas about how virtual, AI agents could work with people in augmented reality, especially in creative contexts. How might multiple, non-anthropomorphic agents have distinct personalities and expertise and feel embodied?

I worked on Hypertext Swarm, a swarm of AIs that scan and analyze artwork to help curators make connections and formulate new ideas across contexts.

Full project research site here.

Exhibits & Talks

Surface Tension @ Peripheral Forms

Exhibit, 2018

Transformed research project into a website for #cyborgs, an online exhibit of digital media.

Westopia

Exhibit, 2017

“Westopia” is a project curated by Parasite 2.0, focusing on the theme of the utopia. I contributed a flag design capturing the visual iconography of the blue dot / current location as a marker of place in a digital sea (center flag, above image).

Pivot Points @ Microsoft Design Expo

Talk, 2017

Presented with Nan Tsai at the Microsoft Design Expo.

An Internet of “Enlightened” Things

Talk, 2017

A talk at the Post-Internet Cities conference at the MAAT Portugal, presenting speculative projects about AI and ML at neighborhood scales.

Networked Colluding @ Ars Electronica

Exhibit, 2017

Installation of our collaborative work Networked Colluding at Ars Electronica about solving a neighborhood mystery through a network of IoT devices. Collaboration with Stephanie Marie Cedeño.

Workshops & Writing

Participatory Scripts

Workshop, 2025

A "poem" written with Python for a School for Poetic Computation class that explores the idea of social scripts and conditional, generative art practices. Inspired by Brian Eno, Yoko Ono, Sol Lewitt, and others, to create a set of instructions for my class to create a collaborative drawing that is different each time.

Propositions

Pub, 2017–2018

A self-published journal started with my cohort during my time at ArtCenter Media Design Practices. This was a way to construct and participate in our own unique critical discourse around design and technology, while having fun. While no longer ongoing, it has a special place in my <3.