When you meet Robin Ahn, you don’t get the archetypal “designer story.” There’s no design agency pedigree or glossy buzzwords—just an almost monastic obsession with building things that didn’t exist before. From pandemic loneliness to leading design at one of the most ambitious R&D platforms on the web, Ahn’s journey is a testimony in resilience, reinvention, and design as a survival instinct.

Q: Robin, let’s start from the top. How did your journey into design begin?

Robin Ahn: I actually stumbled into design during the pandemic. I was a lonely college student, feeling isolated and unsure about what to do with my major. Then I took a UI/UX course (INFO 1998 — Intro to Digital Product Design at Cornell) that quite literally became my antidepressant. Designing gave a sense of purpose to my studies—it shifted my focus from the emptiness of lockdown to the joy of crafting something meaningful and receiving feedback. I’d stay up late just iterating, watching Figma tutorials, and pushing pixels until things clicked.

That’s when I realized design wasn’t just a skillset—it was a lifeline.

Q: You have a fascinating, international backstory. How has growing up across so many countries shaped the way you design?

Robin: I’ve spent about five years each in Korea, Malaysia, Japan, and the U.S.—so my life’s been a bit of what I like to call a “globe-trotting donkey” story. A donkey that keeps moving—stubborn, curious, and endlessly learning from every culture it wanders through.

That experience of being exposed to different cultures taught me early on that design is never universal. Something intuitive in Seoul might feel alien in Dallas. Those contrasts made me hyper-attuned to cultural nuance and accessibility—it’s why I value empathy and observation more than any tool or aesthetic principle.

Q: You describe yourself as someone who “excels in 0-1 environments.” When did that trait start to show?

Robin: That probably started around 2021, when I was still in school. I joined a startup as their only designer after applying to 200 companies, interviewing with 20, and finally getting one yes. It was just me, two PMs, and two developers.

When one developer dismissed my designs because of my age, I didn’t quit. Instead, I enrolled in a front-end coding academy, learned their language, and started designing for the code, not against it. I’d watch Figma videos on my iPhone during my two-hour commute every morning and night. I cold-emailed Samsung designers for critique and became obsessed with A/B testing.

Eventually, that same developer told me I was the most tenacious designer he’d ever met. That’s when I realized: I thrive when I’m building from zero—when the rules aren’t written yet.

Q: You’ve worn many hats—journalist, rapper, teacher. How do those identities influence your design practice?

Robin: Journalism taught me how to ask good questions and extract emotion from answers. During my time as a Senior Intern and Business & Healthcare Writer at D Magazine, I interviewed more than 20 of Dallas’s most influential CEOs—many of them powerhouse Asian women—for the My Roots column spotlighting entrepreneurs of color. I learned how to transform complex stories into something human and relatable, and that same instinct now shapes how I design for users: always lead with curiosity, clarity, and empathy.

At Cornell, I was the Head TA for a 300-student course called INFO 3450: Human–Computer Interaction, where I launched a Figma workshop series with 20 TAs to teach visual design fundamentals. Watching students go from “I’m not a creative person” to building their first prototypes was addictive—it taught me that mentorship is an extension of design; it’s designing the pathway for growth.

Later that year, I received the Teaching Assistant Recognition Award from Cornell’s Information Science Department, presented on behalf of Chair David Mimno and Director Larry Blume.

Q: You’ve been part of several startups before joining Cypris. Can you walk us through some highlights?

Robin: Absolutely. My first major startup experience was Stockfolio, an early-stage video marketplace and cloud platform. I joined as the first designer, built the entire web and mobile experience from the ground up, and managed a small team of marketers and developers. It was my initiation into design systems, stakeholder alignment, and the gritty realities of building structure from chaos.

Then came AI Learners, an ed-tech platform that builds accessible games to teach math and literacy to children with disabilities. We designed for eye-gaze and screen-reader users, turning accessibility from a compliance box into a creative challenge.

The most transformative was at Eva Wardrobe, a three-person startup creating an AI-powered digital closet. The premise was simple: snap a picture of your outfit, and the app recommends new pairings using what you already own. I led the end-to-end product design—street interviews, product flows, branding, everything.

When we launched on the App Store, it hit a five-star rating almost immediately. Users called it “the Clueless digital wardrobe come to life” and “revolutionary for everyday dressing.” For a team of three—two engineers from Cornell and Duke, and me—it was surreal watching people use our product every day. Eva taught me that great design can genuinely shift daily behavior.

Q: What’s one story that captures your approach to design under pressure?

Robin:

During my yearlong tenure at Wayfair, I worked on a project called QC Fails & Damaged on Racks Monetization. Every day, fulfillment centers inspect products before shipping. If an item failed inspection—even for minor packaging issues—it was often scrapped entirely. We were throwing away millions, about $30 million, to be precise—in potential revenue, even when the products were perfectly fine.

I saw an opportunity to fix that. By designing a system for re-grading and reselling these items through open-box channels, we could recover value that was literally sitting on shelves. I spent days on-site in our Jacksonville and Cranbury, NJ warehouses talking to associates, documenting how they made judgment calls, and discovering that their existing tools—Checkbox and Waygrade—didn’t actually let them flag salvageable products.

I worked with engineers and ops leads to redesign that workflow from the ground up, giving associates a way to reassess and reclassify failed items digitally. The pilot version uncovered a $4M+ profit opportunity, reducing waste while improving sustainability metrics.

Q: So you’re now at Cypris. For those unfamiliar, what does the company do and what drew you to it?

Robin:

Cypris is an R&D intelligence platform built for innovators—scientists, strategists, and analysts who need to understand the global research and patent landscape faster than ever. We aggregate millions of data points—research papers, patents, organizations, and news—and make them searchable, connected, and now, with AI, conversational.

When I joined, the product already had incredible depth. You could search patents and papers across industries, but it felt like juggling five tools at once. My role has been to weave those experiences together.

One of the biggest initiatives I led was Cypris Q, our AI-powered research assistant. It allows users to chat directly with the world’s R&D knowledge base—asking questions like “What are the latest breakthroughs in biodegradable coatings?” or “Which companies are filing the most patents in solid-state batteries?” and getting sourced, explainable answers grounded in real documents.

Q: You’re known as the first and only in-house designer at Cypris. How did you handle that level of ownership?

Robin: It’s definitely a lot of ownership and I don’t say that lightly. Cypris is growing fast, with new customers coming onboard almost every day, so I try to stay as close to our users as possible. I make it a point to join weekly and biweekly customer calls with our account managers—onboardings, training sessions, office hours, you name it. My goal is to listen, take notes, and collect real-time feedback on what’s working and where we can improve.

Internally, I see my role as a connector. I work closely with our dev team during implementation, collaborate with marketing to ensure we communicate our products accurately, and often join customer meetings to offer a technical perspective. I want everyone—teammates and clients alike—to know they can come to me for anything and everything product-related.

That strive for proximity to our users has made a measurable impact. Since I joined, user sessions have grown by 58%, up from 42% in the previous quarter. Platform events increased by 21%, and as of September, monthly active users represent 51% of total registered users—up from 25% weekly active users in July.

Of course, these numbers aren’t just the result of design or new feature releases—they’re the fruits of our developers’ relentless work, our CEO’s guidance, and our customer success team’s constant support. But still, it’s rewarding to see how introducing thoughtful design processes and tighter feedback loops has helped the entire company move in sync.

As our conversation winds down, Robin’s tone softens but her focus stays sharp. What comes through isn’t ambition for its own sake, but conviction—a belief that empathy and clarity can turn uncertainty into progress. She talks about design the way some talk about teaching or science: as a practice of patience and discovery.

“Designing from nothing,” she says, “means believing something meaningful can exist before it does—and then convincing others it can, too.”

It’s an idea that captures her perfectly: grounded, curious, and always building toward something yet to exist.

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