Independent product strategist. I help teams find the product worth building — and ship it.

10+ years taking products 0→1 across digital and physical. Strategy, UX, and AI — wherever the hard part is.

I take one or two sprints a quarter. 30-minute call → proposal in three days.

Kelly Chen
Currently building with
Influenxio
Product Strategy · UX
Mommy Goes to Work
Brand & Operations
Dots Global
Program Director
155 Studio
Founder
how I work
See the three sprints
01

Product Strategy

Cut through the noise to the one product worth building. Positioning, scope, the wedge — and the discipline to say no.

02

0→1 Build

From a blank page to a thing in people's hands. UX, UI, and the unglamorous execution that gets it shipped.

03

AI Integration

Where AI actually earns its place in the product — not bolted on for the pitch deck, but built into the workflow.

Selected work

All 7 projects
01
Influenxio
Leading product strategy and UX for an AI creator–brand platform — turning feature soup into clear priorities, a focused product direction, and usable end-to-end flows.
Product Strategy · UX/UI
02
Dots Global
Running international youth programs across languages, cultures, and stakeholders — then building the digital systems they need to launch and operate.
Program Director · Bicultural Programs
03
155 Studio
Designing and building a task + time-tracking app for makers — shipping it myself, in public.
Founder · Solo Build
04
Chineasy
Led product across Chineasy's app, website, and physical learning experiences — used in 30+ countries and recognized as a 2022 Apple Design Awards finalist.
Chineasy · Product Manager
I build in public on Instagram. The thinking behind the decisions — product strategy, 0→1, and the working-parent reality.
@kelly.building
selected work

Work I'd actually want to walk you through.

I've worked on more than fits here — these are the ones worth slowing down for. Digital and physical, founding to strategy. Same job throughout: figuring out what's worth building.

01
Influenxio
Turning an AI creator–brand platform from feature soup into a product with a clear wedge and a usable flow.
Product Strategy · UX/UI · 2024–now
02
Chineasy
Product across the app, website, and a board game for the platform that teaches Chinese through visual building blocks — a 2022 Apple Design Awards finalist.
Chineasy · Product Manager · 2019–2025
03
Mommy Goes to Work
A corporate gifting brand celebrating working parents — strategy, brand, and the boxes-out-the-door logistics, end to end.
Brand & Operations
04
155 Studio
A task + time app for makers, designed and built by me — the clearest proof of how I think about product.
Founder · Solo Build
05
MIT Future Ready Camp
The complete registration system for MIT Future Ready, a 5-day camp taught by MIT instructors — bilingual landing, payments, scholarship calculator, and the backend pipeline. Built front to back by me.
Dots Global Academy · Full-stack Build
06
YouthLab
A youth capacity-building program in Taipei — Dots Global won the public tender, and I built the three surfaces it runs on: a public page, a participant area, and a staff console.
Dots Global · Full-stack Build
07
Dots Global
Running ongoing youth programs — summits, forums, and capacity-building. Internal operations and cross-stakeholder project management.
Program Director · Youth Programs
← all work

Influenxio

An AI-driven platform connecting creators and brands. I lead product strategy and design — finding the focused product hiding inside an ambitious one.

Product Strategy · UX/UI Live site · influenxio.ai
influenxio.ai
The problem

Creator–brand collaboration is full of friction: discovery, briefs, negotiation, delivery. The temptation is to build for all of it at once — and end up with a platform that does ten things adequately and nothing memorably.

What I did

I worked with the founders and engineering to narrow the surface area: define the wedge, sequence the roadmap, and redesign the core collaboration flow so the AI does real work — matching, drafting, pricing — instead of decorating the UI.

Day to day that means owning specs, running the design, and keeping the team honest about what's actually for the user versus what's for the deck.

Where it's at

Live and iterating. The product has a clearer story, a tighter onboarding, and a roadmap the team can defend.

0→1
Core flow redesigned
PM+UX
Dual role on the team
AI
Built into the workflow
more work Next case — Chineasy See Services
← all work

Chineasy

I led product at Chineasy — the award-winning platform that teaches Chinese through visual building blocks, used across 30+ countries in 19 languages.

Chineasy · Product Manager · 2019–2025 Live site · chineasy.com
chineasy.com
What I did

I led product across everything Chineasy shipped — the app, a full website relaunch, even a board game — from planning and scope through testing, deployment, performance, and the day-to-day operations after launch.

Recognition

The app was a 2022 Apple Design Awards finalist, reached No. 2 in the UK App Store (editor's choice) and No. 6 in the US education category. Beyond the app: a podcast featured by iTunes and Amazon Alexa, and a board game that won a Parents' Choice Award.

ADA 2022
Apple Design Awards finalist
No. 2
UK App Store
19
languages · 30+ countries
more work Next case — Mommy Goes to Work See Services
← all work

Mommy Goes to Work

A corporate gifting brand celebrating working parents. I help bring it to life end to end — from positioning and marketing to printing, warehousing, and getting the boxes into customers' hands.

Brand & Operations Live site · woom.us
woom.us
The problem

Companies want to support employees becoming parents but reach for generic gifts. The opportunity: a brand built around the real moments of becoming a working parent — and finding your feet again at work — that makes people feel seen.

What I did

Positioning and messaging, product curation, the brand voice, cold-outreach playbooks for US brands, and the unglamorous operations: orders, fulfillment, and the handoff to logistics partners.

On a team this small, there's no one to delegate the boring parts to — so the strategy has to survive contact with reality. It keeps me honest.

Where it's at

Growing its US client pipeline, with a repeatable outreach motion and a brand that holds together from first email to delivered gift.

A–Z
Strategy → logistics
US
Brand & outreach
B2B
Corporate gifting
more work Next case — 155 Studio See Services
← all work

155 Studio

An iOS/macOS app for task management and time tracking, built for makers who run on focus, not meetings. Designed and shipped by me.

Founder · Solo Build
155 Studio
Why I built it

I run several projects as an operator and a parent — time is the scarcest thing I have. Existing tools optimize for teams and tickets, not for one person trying to protect deep work. So I built the tool I needed.

What it taught me

Building it solo — design, SwiftUI, the data model, the visual system — is the most honest product education there is. Every shortcut I'd ever waved through as a PM, I now had to actually live with.

It's also where I practice building in public: shipping, writing about the decisions, and letting the work be the proof.

Where it's at

In active development — a Partner → Project → Task model, Workspace Focus, and a soft, rounded visual language that makes daily use feel calm rather than nagging.

Solo
Design + build
SwiftUI
iOS / macOS
Public
Shipped & documented
more work Next case — MIT Future Ready Camp See Services
← all work

MIT Future Ready Camp

The complete registration system for MIT Future Ready, a 5-day intensive camp taught by MIT instructors — designed and built by me, front to back.

Dots Global Academy · Full-stack Build Live site · academy.dotsglobal.co
academy.dotsglobal.co
The starting point

MIT Future Ready Camp came together on a compressed timeline: once the team committed to running the program, recruitment needed to begin almost immediately. There was no existing website, registration flow, or operational system to build from.

The decision

Rather than launching another standalone form, I created a dedicated subdomain and built the first version of the program website within the compressed timeline. The goal was not only to publish information quickly, but to establish one mechanism that could support every step that followed.

What it became

That first website grew into the operating system for the entire participant journey — from program information and registration to payment, automated communication, and, later, booking individual 1-on-1 sessions. The same underlying mechanism continues to support new needs without rebuilding the process each time.

Full-stack
Front to back, solo
Bilingual
EN + 繁中
Auto
Workers → Notion → email
more work Next case — YouthLab See Services
← all work

Dots Global

I run youth and education programs with Dots Global — summits, forums, camps, and capacity-building. They're ongoing by nature, so this is a living list. A few I've led:

Dots Global · Program Director Live site · dotsglobal.co
dotsglobal.co
Global InnoYouth Summit
2025
Program Director

A large-scale youth summit under Dots Global. I led the program coordination — aligning speakers, partners, and the team to put it on, on schedule.

Live site · InnoYouth Summit
YouthLab
2026
Program Director

A capacity-building program won through a public tender — internal operations and project management across multiple stakeholders, keeping deliverables and deadlines on track.

See the YouthLab case
Why it matters here

This is the counterweight to the product work — proof that strategy without operations is just a nice document. New programs land here as they launch.

Ongoing
Multi-year with Dots Global
Multi-party
Stakeholders aligned
Gov
Grant-funded
more work Next case — Influenxio See Services
← all work

YouthLab

A youth capacity-building program in Taipei — Dots Global won the public tender, and I built the three surfaces it runs on: the public page, the participant area, and the staff console.

Dots Global · Full-stack Build Live site · youthlab.dotsglobal.co
youthlab.dotsglobal.co
The starting point

YouthLab originally relied on a Google Form for registration. It could collect the necessary information, but it gave participants very little help understanding the program as a whole — what they were joining, how it would work, and what would be expected of them.

The decision

We decided to build a dedicated landing page that could explain the program before asking anyone to apply. I structured the content around the participant journey, making the purpose, format, schedule, and next steps easier to understand in one place.

What I built

Three surfaces on one deploy: a public page for admissions and logistics; a participant area where students sign in with a personal code to check the schedule, request leave, book a make-up session, and fill in the pre- and post-class surveys; and a staff console behind a passcode for attendance, announcements, rescheduling, and collecting submissions.

How it's wired

A Cloudflare Worker sits in front of Notion as the datastore — roster, leave and make-ups, pre-class surveys, post-class feedback — with R2 holding the documents students upload to justify an absence. Keeping the records in Notion means the program team can read and correct them in a tool they already use, instead of waiting on me.

What changed

The website became the program's front door rather than another form link. Participants could make an informed decision before registering, and the same foundation later expanded to support participant actions and staff operations throughout the program.

3 surfaces
Public · participants · staff
Notion
As the datastore
Workers + R2
Sign-in, records, uploads
more work Next case — Dots Global See Services
work with me

Fixed scope. Fixed price. Shipped in weeks.

Not hourly consulting, not a retainer. Each engagement is a sprint with a defined outcome: we agree on the scope, I ship it, and everything is yours — the files, the systems, the decisions. I take one or two per quarter.

01

AI Operations Sprint

2–3 weeks
Timeline
For founders and lean teams whose week is eaten by manual operations.

I map how your operation actually runs, find the leaks, and build the automations that close them — daily digests, reporting pipelines, dashboards that update themselves, systems that talk to each other. Everything is built on the tools you already use, so there's nothing new to learn and nothing to migrate.

This is the same system I use to run six projects as one person.
You get
  • An ops audit with a priority map
  • 2–3 working automations, live in your stack
  • A handover doc — your team runs it without me
  • A 30-day warranty, with an optional monthly maintenance plan after
Discuss this sprint
02

0→1 Product Sprint

2 weeks
Timeline
For teams with an idea that's been circling in meetings for months.

Two weeks from a fuzzy idea to something you can click. I frame the scope, design the core flow, and hand your engineers a spec they can start building the next morning — with the decisions already made, and written down.

This is how I work at Influenxio, every week.
You get
  • An interactive prototype — real flows, in the browser
  • A dev-ready spec with the tickets broken down
  • A scope with the no's already said
Discuss this sprint
03

Launch System Build

1–2 weeks
Timeline
For programs, events, and small products that need to take signups — and payments — now.

A complete funnel, live: landing page, registration and payment flow, automatic confirmation emails, and a backend your team can actually see. It's the same system I built for MIT Future Ready, a 5-day camp taught by MIT instructors.

See it live: the MIT Future Ready Camp registration system.
You get
  • A bilingual landing page
  • Registration + payment flow
  • Automated confirmation & follow-up emails
  • A live backend — no new software for your team
Discuss this sprint

Why fixed price?

Because I work AI-native, and my delivery speed would make hourly billing dishonest in both directions. You pay for the outcome — how fast I get there is my problem. A 50% deposit books the slot; the rest is due on handover.

And so the fixed price stays honest: every sprint includes one mid-sprint review and one revision round. New asks swap for unbuilt scope — nothing gets added quietly — and handover is accepted within five business days.

how it works
01

A 30-minute call

You bring the mess. We find the sprint inside it — or I tell you honestly that there isn't one.

02

A fixed-scope proposal

Within three days: scope, price, dates. No surprises later — the no's are part of the deal.

03

Sprint, then handover

I build, you review mid-way, and at the end everything is yours — files, systems, and the doc to run them.

about

I'm Kelly — a product strategist who still ships.

Ten-plus years taking products from zero to one, across both digital and physical. I work as an independent strategist embedded with teams — close enough to own the outcome, not so far that I'm just advice.

I run my work under 155 Studio, where I build my own products too — so I'm never just theorizing about what makes building hard.

Kelly Chen

How I think about product

Most products don't fail from too few features — they fail from no point of view. My job is to find the one thing worth building, frame it sharply, and then do the unglamorous work of getting it into people's hands.

I'm equally comfortable in a strategy conversation and in the weeds of a spec or a fulfillment spreadsheet. The range is the point: strategy that never touches reality is just a nice document.

The working-parent advantage

I'm a mom. Which means I have less time than almost anyone I work with — and that turned into my most useful product instinct: a low tolerance for motion that isn't progress. Constraints aren't a limitation here. They're how I stay sharp about what actually matters.

What I'm building now

Product strategy and UX at Influenxio, brand and operations at Mommy Goes to Work, program delivery at Dots Global, and my own app at 155 Studio — documented in public as I go.

Working on something hard?

The best products usually start as a messy problem nobody's framed yet. If that's where you are, that's where I'm useful.

If it's a fit, I'll get back to you and we'll schedule a 30-minute call.

Or email me — [email protected][email protected] Copied