Educational Experience

School of Visual Arts, NYC, US
M.S. Interaction Design (IxD)

Rhode Island School of Design, RI, US
M.I.D Industrial Design

School of Design Jiangnan University, Wuxi
B.S Industrial Design 

Contact

Bowen Li creates works addressing human-centered user experience design, business driven service design, and human computer interaction research. His mediums include digital applications (systems), wearable, robot, AR/VR, game, material experiment, digital installation. Bowen is a long-term guest speaker at School of Design JiangNan University at Jiangsu, Wuxi. His class explores the intersection of art, design, technology and business. He graduated from School of Visual Arts NYC IxD with Distinction and thesis award.

Bowen is the recipient of numerous awards, including iF Design Award, Fast Company, Core77, IDSA, A’ Design Award, Red Dot Award. His work has been exhibited internationally, at MoMA, Milan and Dubai Design Week, Ming Contemporary Museum. His work has been featured on Fast Company, Art Forum, Business Insider, Bloomberg, Yahoo, TechCrunch, Domus, Yanko Design, Behance.

He is Partner and Executive Director of YESHENG Arts and Design Center. YESHENG specializes in portfolio training services for undergraduate and graduate design students applying to art schools abroad. In his five years at YESHENG from 2019 - 2024, the Arts & Design Center has served over 1,000 clients. It has secured numerous top-tier offers such as Harvard, MIT, CMU, and the Royal College of Art etc. Achieved annual revenue growth from 0 to 38 million.

Professional Experience

YESHENG Arts & Design Center, Shanghai
YS Partner & Executive Director

1. Business & Management

Enrollment Strategy and Optimization:

• Optimized enrollment by increasing undergraduate intake through partnerships with international and private high schools, enhancing efficiency.

• Assessed profit margins and costs between undergraduates and graduates, creating high-value enrollment strategies.

Channel Collaboration and In-house Marketing Team Development:

• Implemented a balanced channel strategy, initially leveraging third-party channels to quickly acquire student resources while gradually developing in-house enrollment teams to reduce dependence on third-party channels.

• Leveraged social media (WeChat, Xiaohongshu) for brand promotion, improving recruitment efficiency.

Referral Mechanism and Customer Satisfaction:

• Implemented referral incentives, setting performance targets and signing bonuses for teachers and staff to recommend new students, cutting acquisition costs.

• Enhanced customer satisfaction by optimizing teaching and application services, ensuring high satisfaction and reducing refund incidents.

Cost Management and Revenue Optimization:

• Standardized courses and specified class hours for accurate revenue recognition and improved teaching efficiency.

• Flexibly managed projects and allocated teacher resources to optimize utilization.

• Established an income recognition system based on actual class hours, ensuring financial accuracy.

• Implemented performance and incentive mechanisms, boosting teacher enthusiasm and flexibility.

• Developed online basic courses to improve student capabilities and optimize teacher allocation.

• Introduced a teaching management system to automate scheduling, reduce waste, ensure accountability, and enhance efficiency.

2.Teaching & Academic

Team Building:

• Defined recruitment needs and wrote job descriptions, leveraging personal networks to attract top graduates.

• Emphasized balanced teams with strong theoretical and technical skills.

• Participated in interviews to ensure alignment with values and assess teaching and industry understanding.

• Facilitated onboarding to integrate new hires with curriculum and teaching tools.

Curriculum Design and Development:

• Focused on rigor, academic depth, practicality, and innovation.

• Conducted collective discussions to integrate insights and address learning challenges.

• Developed cohesive foundational and project-based courses to ensure effective application of concepts.

Student Development and Skill Training:

• Encouraged broad reading and critical thinking, covering diverse topics to enhance analytical skills.

• Offered diverse technical courses in software, hardware programming, crafting, and materials science.

• Promoted the integration of technology and theory in projects to foster innovative outcomes.

Ant Financial GLocal UED, Shanghai
Senior UX Designer（P6+）

• Collaborated with product, legal, and technical teams to work with the Hong Kong Monetary Authority（HKMA） to complete the first eWallet integration with the FPS system in Hong Kong. This included building fundamental wallet capabilities such as eKYC, Hong Kong resident bank account binding, offline payments, and quick transfers. Successfully achieved the first-ever cross-eWallet transfer, payment, and remittance capabilities in the Hong Kong region.

• Led a user research team to dive into the local consumer market in Hong Kong. By getting insights from consumer behavior, This is a fully design-oriented requirements to drive product demands and operational strategy adjustments. Proposed the AlipayHK e-Stamp collection operational feature, significantly addressing the issue of insufficient motivation among local users to collect and redeem coupons. This resulted in a huge local business impact.

• In the 2019 Chinese New Year, launched the “福（FU） Character Stamp Collection” campaign in Hong Kong. Users collected New Year 福（FU）character stamps through AR scanning, peer-to-peer invitations, and offline payments. This campaign became the most conversational and highly participated operational activity throughout the Chinese New Year period in the local community.

• Developed eWallet Touch ’n Go in Malaysia, optimizing user registration, eKYC verification and login processes. Reduced user registration time by 30%, increased successful login rates by 20%, and enhanced overall user satisfaction by 15%.

• Designed and optimized features for TNG wallet integration with Apple App Store. Improved feature adoption rates by 40% and reduced user drop-off rates during transactions by 25%.

• Build offline red packet code collection, payment, and coupon package functionalities for GCash ewallet in the Philippines.

• Led the project of GCash backend system design in the Philippines, covering merchant onboarding, contracting, workflow management, and the data dashboard.

• Formulated the visual standard guidelines for Alipay Plus CGCP international code standard.

FitTime 睿健时代, Wuxi & Beijing
Chief Product Officer & Partner

FitTime was established in January 2013 and is the largest fitness community in China, providing efficient mobile fitness solutions for fat loss, body shaping, and muscle gain. In January 2014, FitTime received millions of RMB in angel investment from ZhenFund（真格基金） and （险峰）K2VC. Six months later, in July 2014, it received millions of dollars in Series A investment from Matrix Partners China（经纬中国）. Two years later, in April 2016, FitTime secured tens of millions of RMB in Series B financing.

• As the first designer at FitTime, I joined the team four months after the company’s established. I quickly helped the team complete the brand's visual identity, including the highly recognized FT logo design. I worked on the usage scenarios, widespread, and visual extension of the brand around the FT logo. The brand application covered various scenarios including the FitTime website, online social media platforms (RenRen, Weibo, WeChat Official Account, YouTube, Youku, Tencent Video), self-developed whey protein powder, and fitness-related products (apparel, yoga mats, wristbands). Through high-quality content integration and a design-driven content operation model, we quickly gained an absolute leading position in the fitness market, which at the time was dominated by Tieba and forums. By the end of 2014, the total number of followers on Renren, Weibo, and WeChat Official Account exceeded 8 million.

• After completing the angel round of financing, I was responsible for recruiting and leading a 40-person team for product design and development on mobile platforms (iOS & Android). Collaborated with coach consultants and KOL to build our 1st version mobile training APP (2014). My works addressing team building, recruit and interview, covert business strategy to product objective and measurements, project management, hands-on work with the team for application information architecture, wireframe, LOW/HIGH fidelity mockup, user recruitment and usability testing, course design, course video shooting, voiceover scripting etc. Having 2 big Version and 38 sub-version in 1.5 years. Serving over 5 million users on mobile Application.