Rising Stars: Meet Xin Feng

Today we’d like to introduce you to Xin Feng.

Hi Xin, it’s an honor to have you on the platform. Thanks for taking the time to share your story with us – to start maybe you can share some of your backstory with our readers?
I am a designer/creative technologist who holds MDes from Harvard GSD. I am passionate about creative technology and design on individual well-being including health, cognition, emotion and social relationships, and interested in bridging physical and virtual worlds through XR and other new modalities. My work was nominated by MUSE Creative Awards, Non-Architecture and exhibited in Bi-City Biennale of Urbanism/Architecture.

I am currently a creative technologist/engineer at Meta Reality Labs, where I work on the design and implementation of VR-related user-facing features. Prior to Meta, I worked at Tencent game studio as a technical artist/engineer, specializing in Houdini generative design for a 3A IP game and delivering human-centered gameplay experience.

Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way. Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
It has been an explorative and adventurous journey toward becoming a creative technologist. Trained as an architect, apart from spatial design, I gradually built up my interest in human-centered design and new interaction paradigms through multimedia. With the exploration on this path, I have encountered challenges like how to utilize technology as a media to create better/useful experiences, how to deliver a design that is truly assistive to the targeted audience, what is the potentiality of new emerging media, etc. I think actively learning new technology and getting exposed to other talented designers’ work are always helpful for me.

Thanks for sharing that. So, maybe next you can tell us a bit more about your work?
I have been working on spatial design before shifting my focus to interactive media. No matter what the deliverable is, the core of my work is human-centered and I am striving to find innovative/creative design solutions to create a better/useful experience.

My recent work mainly focuses on investigating assistive interfaces/media in enhancing social connectedness in a remote living and working background.

Partnering with Tiange Wang, we have developed SinkInSync, a VR-based cross-person EEG neurofeedback platform prototype. This generative VR platform uses one user’s brainwave data to procedurally render 3D scenes and passively displays visual cues that are synchronized with the real-time brainwave frequency to another user. We found this project very interesting and ground-breaking as we aim to explore the potential of VR as an avenue for augmenting cognitive and emotional social connectedness via externally-induced brainwave synchronization between pairs of individuals. The technologies in fostering interpersonal connections without using the common tool of speech is our main focus in the project. How biometric data could add to the channels of communication and help improve accessibility is a relatively untouched area and we believe our project could be inspiring for the creative industry. This project was nominated Gold Winner in Muse Creative Awards 2023.

Apart from this VR immersive work, Hao Wang and I envisioned a new type of Instagramal community which helps socialization and challenges digital/cyber relationships. In our community, habitants get a matched housing unit based on their personality. While we provide intimate, personal space to be alone, a screen, acting as a scape, serves to communicate and exchange emotions anonymously. This Instagramal screen is an interface between co-habitants. Acting and reacting on both sides of the screen could create unexpected relationships – no matter whether you want to reveal yourself or not. This is another exploration of how multimedia could possibly reshape our social connection and relationship and this work received a finalist in NON-Architecture.

Moreover, I developed a physical device prototype for game players in multiplayer games where users could use vibration to receive or deliver real-time messages to each other instead of using verbal language.

Besides interest and passion in design, I specialize in incorporating technology into a feasible and tangible interface or prototype that users could actually benefit from. Apart from being a creative technologist/designer, I am also a software engineer specialized in programming. I like to get my hands dirty in exploring emerging technology and utilize it in figuring out novel design solutions.

Is there something surprising that you feel even people who know you might not know about?
I have motion sickness in VR but I am still very passionate about developing immersive prototypes in VR

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.xinfengdesign.com/
• Instagram: _xinf.manx
• Other: NYC x Design Festival Talk: https://festival.nycxdesign.org/event/SinkInSync-Biofeedback-VR-Experience-for-Remote-Social-Connectedness-A-Designer-Talk/

Image Credits
image_5: credit to Zhifei Xu