Haiyan Zhang

Haiyan Zhang is a designer, technologist and maker of things.

She is Innovation Director at Microsoft Research Cambridge, exploring new "Connected Play" experiences enabled by cutting-edge technology.

Haiyan was formerly Innovation Director at Lift London, a Microsoft Game Studio; Co-Founder and Design Lead for the innovation platform, OpenIDEO.com, bringing together a global community to solve challenges for social good and used as the enterprise innovation engine for organisations such as British Airways, DeutscheBank, Harvard Business School.

Working at the design consultancy, IDEO, she has created innovative technology experiences for community building, entertainment, and financial services. She has consulted for companies such as Mattel, Electronic Arts, HBO, France Telecom, Alcatel, Cisco, AT&T.

Haiyan’s work is informed by her previous profession as a software engineer creating applications for the biomedical and data-mining industries. As part of a development team, she created an electroencephalograph (EEG) visualization tool for intra-operative monitoring currently being used in hospitals across North America.

She has lived and worked in Melbourne, Toronto, China, Milan, San Francisco and now resides in London.