# Karen Liu

> Product Design at Goodreads | Ex-Brave Browser, Shutterstock, BNY Mellon

Location: San Francisco, California, United States
Profile: https://flows.cv/karenliu

With over a decade of product design experience spanning startups and Fortune 500 companies, I'm passionate about creating intuitive, user-centered and accessible experiences with real utility that people love. As a Senior Product Designer at Goodreads (an Amazon subsidiary), I lead the design of discovery, personalization, book tracking, and rating experiences—all informed by foundational and iterative UX research that puts readers first. During my time as an early designer at Brave Browser, I shipped cross-platform features like onboarding, the new tab page, Brave Shields, Brave Talk, Brave News, and VPN, while mentoring junior designers and scaling the user research function.  

I've built two design systems in the past at both Brave and Goodreads, which has made me adept at identifying UX patterns, systems thinking, setting accessibility standards, and contributing to design system MCP development. My work in design systems and experience in motion design using Figma, LottieFiles, and AI-powered prototyping all help me in creating visually delightful experiences that genuinely improve people's lives.

## Work Experience
### Senior Product Designer @ Goodreads
Jan 2023 – Jan 2026 | San Francisco, California, United States
▸ Designed the pre-release ratings & review experience for readers, publishers, and authors 
▸ Designed the Unified Reading Challenge 
▸ Contributing to design system MCP development for AI tools and designing new design+engineering AI-assisted workflows

### Lead Product Designer @ Goodreads
Jan 2021 – Jan 2023 | San Francisco, California, United States
▸ Designing the discovery, personalization, and book tracking experience for Goodreads customers
▸ Managing and building the design system, encouraging its adoption, and acting as the bridge between design and development 
▸ Shipped the new book page
▸ Contributing to design job postings, interviewing, and hiring

### Senior Product Designer @ Amazon
Jan 2021 – Jan 2026 | San Francisco, California, United States
L6 Senior Product Designer at Amazon Books focused on Goodreads.

### Product Design Manager @ Brave Software
Jan 2021 – Jan 2021 | San Francisco, California, United States
▸ Managing and building the design system, encouraging its adoption, and acting as the bridge between design and development 
▸ Contributing to design job postings, interviewing, and hiring
▸ Scaling up Brave's user research function
▸ Mentoring junior designers
▸ Designing Premium paid features cross-surface: Brave VPN, Brave Talk, Brave News

### Senior Product Designer @ Brave Software
Jan 2018 – Jan 2020 | San Francisco, California, United States
▸ Designing various browser features: Brave Shields (built-in privacy protections), New Tab page, Speedreader, Private Window & Private Window with Tor
▸ Designing the cross-platform onboarding experience
▸ Designing the advertiser experience, encompassing the ads dashboard, campaign and creative manager, and campaign builder
▸ Designing the creator landing page
▸ Various graphic design tasks for merch and Brave swag
▸ Design systems lead bringing Abstract design versioning and Sketch symbols to Brave's nascent design system, and later shepherding migration over to Figma
▸ Setting up user research infrastructure with moderated and unmoderated user testing

### Product Designer @ Shutterstock
Jan 2017 – Jan 2018 | New York, New York, United States
▸  Design with afocus on E-commerce customer conversion
▸  Shipped Images pricing and compare licenses page, 500 error page, and Developer site
▸  Updated the Footage product page and search results page with the Shutterstock Design System while making minor UX improvements
▸  Tackle design problems end to end and take on strategic design initiatives
▸  Work closely with product management to A/B test, define new features, and influence product 

Formal Recognition
▸  Won Women@Shutterstock Logo Competition
▸  Received award for “Candid Communication”
▸  Employee Shoutout for work on Pricing page Design Sprint and UX audit of eCommerce conversion flows

### UI/UX Designer @ T5 Labs, Inc.
Jan 2015 – Jan 2016 | New York, New York, United States
▸  Lead designer for CookieJar, RSRV, and other Android and iOS apps
▸  Art direction, motion and visual design
▸  Interaction design, prototyping and testing
▸  User research via guerrilla tactics

### User Experience Designer @ BNY Mellon
Jan 2013 – Jan 2015 | Greater New York City Area
▸  Lead designer for the Corporate Treasury Liquidity Dashboard and other web apps
▸  Defined UX standards and UI libraries


## Education
### Certificate in Graphic and Digital Design
Parsons School of Design - The New School

### Certificate in Interior Design and Architecture Studies
Parsons School of Design - The New School

### Bachelor's degree in business administration and human-computer interaction
Carnegie Mellon University


## Contact & Social
- LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/karenkliu9
- Website: http://www.karenkliu.com

---
Source: https://flows.cv/karenliu
JSON Resume: https://flows.cv/karenliu/resume.json
Last updated: 2026-02-23