# John Hong > Product Design Engineer @ Sanas Location: San Francisco Bay Area, United States Profile: https://flows.cv/johnhong I am a product designer who operates at the junction of software and hardware. Guided by a human-centered approach, I solve challenges through a lens that places people at the heart of innovation. You can find my work here: https://johnhong.xyz/ ## Work Experience ### Product Design Engineer @ Sanas Jan 2025 – Present | Palo Alto, California, United States breaking language barriers ### Product Design Engineer @ BrewBird Jan 2025 – Jan 2025 | San Carlos, California, United States BrewBird is a Sequoia-backed Series A1 startup designing premium coffee machines & supply services for enterprise. Active users in the offices of Meta, Rivian, GAP, and others. • Led the LED display redesign to improve usability and communication; established A/B testing framework, dashboards, and cross-functional alignment with firmware, mechanical, product, and sales. • Designed and shipped a solution to the longstanding light-bleed defect, owning R&D through fabrication of a new display mask that enhanced optics, elevating the end-user experience. ### Teaching Assistant @ Stanford Product Realization Lab Jan 2023 – Jan 2025 The PRL is Stanford’s mechanical engineering teaching lab and maker space, open to all students with 1,400+ active users annually. • Mentored students from undergrad to PhDs in product design and fabrication while facilitating lab operations across varying manufacturing processes, primarily additive manufacturing and other rapid prototyping practices. • Teaching Assistant for Engineering Design Analytics (ME217) and Design for Additive Manufacturing (ME127/227) — co-designed curriculum applying engineering methods to the specialty coffee industry, and taught AM assembly, interfacing, CAD simulation, algorithmic modeling (topology optimization & generative design), tooling, and latticing. ### Product Design Intern @ BrewBird Jan 2024 – Jan 2024 | San Carlos, California, United States • 0→1 UI/UX for the coffee machine's upcoming 720×720 circular LCD display. • Led ethnographic interviews and onsite studies with all stakeholders (end users, office coffee suppliers, and technicians) to identify pressing issues with BrewBird's end-to-end experience. • Shipped solutions to pressing UX issues via existing touchpoints (LED logic redesign, hardware add-ons, and strategic signage). ### Product Design Intern @ Poursteady Jan 2023 – Jan 2023 | Brooklyn, New York, United States Poursteady designs state-of-the-art coffee machines that bring automation to the time-consuming pour-over ritual, enabling cafés to serve high-quality coffee with speed and consistency. • Work recognized in Silicon Valley UX Awards 2024 (Runner-Up) and Core77 Design Awards 2024 (Notable). • Led the 0→1 UX and interaction design of the PS2, Poursteady’s next-generation commercial pour-over machine—crafting an intuitive café workflow for creating and brewing complex recipes on a 128×64 OLED display with rotary knob interface. • Solved critical issues for the design & manufacturing of the first set of beta units. My responsibilities included prototyping, CAD design, and manufacturing support. ### Product Design Intern @ Meta Jan 2022 – Jan 2022 | Menlo Park, California, United States Facebook App — Communities Team • Designed UI/UX while coordinating cross-functional collaboration to successfully implement notification logic for Facebook’s Gifts, shipping in Greece, Cambodia, and Colombia. • Sole intern in a cross-team design sprint, with my work showcased to Meta’s leadership. Utilized Figma, Origami, and Protopie to create high-fidelity designs and prototypes for both mobile and web. ### Product Designer @ Sparkademy Jan 2020 – Jan 2021 | Zurich, Switzerland Sparkademy is a B2B ed-tech startup providing upskilling coursework and platforms, with active users from Cargill, Siemens, Philip Morris International, and others. • Designed the 0→1 UI/UX of end-user and internal web platforms. • Shipped products that raised average NPS from -4 to 20 (and into the 80s as of 2022), increased grading efficiency by 55%, and reduced user clarification requests by 85%. ### Product Design Intern @ Sparkademy Jan 2020 – Jan 2020 | Zurich, Switzerland • Established design principles, design system, and a UX culture within Sparkademy to address key UX issues and apply a common design language across all products. Laid the foundations for user feedback and engagement tracking with Intercom, Heaps.io, Qualtrics. ## Education ### Master of Science - MS in Mechanical Engineering Stanford University ### Bachelor of Science - BS in Product Design (School of Engineering) Stanford University ## Contact & Social - LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/johnhong0818 - Portfolio: https://johnhong.xyz/ --- Source: https://flows.cv/johnhong JSON Resume: https://flows.cv/johnhong/resume.json Last updated: 2026-04-13