# May-Li ✨ Khoe > VP of Design, Co-Founder, Interdisciplinary Artist, Writer, Educator Location: San Francisco, California, United States Profile: https://flows.cv/mayli Interdisciplinary artist, writer, designer, inventor, co-founder, educator, executive, creative leader, DJ, dancer, musician. Background in design, engineering, and interdisciplinary mischief. Decades of experience shipping products and experiences, including work on multiple operating systems and inventions that have now become ubiquitous and everyday, and software agents as early as the 90s. Spoken at numerous events worldwide, guest lectured both in English and Spanish, built and leveled up teams and cultures, mentored dozens, including training new managers who are now executives. Over 20 years of experience working on and organizing around what some people call "DEI" and I consider simply being systematic and considered. Proponent of systems of care, poetic ontologies, subverting status quo, and play. Nadie te quita lo bailado. ## Work Experience ### Co-Founder, Advisor @ Sprout Jan 2020 – Present This beloved, inspiring platform, formerly known as MakeSpace, allowed people real-time video and audio connection within a flexible digital canvas. Users could establish a vibe, level of expressiveness, and playfulness not formerly possible and still not present in most video conferencing software. The project, originally launched during the fever dream of pandemic lockdown, inspired the direction of products such as Figjam. See https://sprout.place for more info. ### Co-Founder @ Scribble Jan 2017 – Present ### VP of Design @ Handshake Jan 2024 – Jan 2026 ### Executive Consultant @ One Project Jan 2020 – Jan 2024 2020-2021 Design and execution of the hiring strategy and process to found a brand new systems-design product team for PostCapitalist Economic Systems design initiative. Led the team through the full interview process, closed it out with a successful hire of the organization's first Product Leader. In other words: designed the system to hire systems designers to design systems. 2022-2024 guided and assisted design and execution of recruiting process and strategy for a Postcapitalist Economic System Architect in partnership with Product Leader. Ongoing design advising and recruiting and hiring support. ### VP of Design @ Khan Academy Jan 2017 – Jan 2019 | Mountain View At the company level: - Revamped product development process - Helped strategically restructured the organization - Established presence of design role at the executive level - Rolled out a clearer company-wide decision-making process - Clarified and rolled out product org roles and responsibilities - Refreshed company values - Leveled up company-wide design sense - Co-founded the early product development team … as well as company-wide operational, financial, strategic problem solving, annual goal setting, etc. At the team level: - Established a design process - Grew team from a handful to ~19 - Rolled out career ladders and levels, technical skill rubrics - Coached three ICs into management who are now at Director+ level, hired fourth - Established user research function - Established marketing and brand design function - Founded content strategy function - Designed and rolled out new team operations - Established norms for design feedback - Established and nurtured performance review process - Established a physical creative collaboration space that became the center of the office space for design and cross-functional collaboration - Determined the strategy, process for hiring my replacement, then executed on said process Design-wise: - Established and rolled out design principles - Established new design system - Led new art direction - Directed and executed a rebrand - Oversaw new product / features, including LSAT prep, new District product, Student Learning Missions - IC work on early product development Everything listed here was a collective effort with the amazing design team, my cross-functional collaborators, and my executive sponsor the COO. ### Co-Founder and Co-Director of Long-term Research @ Khan Academy Jan 2015 – Jan 2018 Conceived of and co-founded this team alongside Andy Matuschak. Read more at: https://early.khanacademy.org/ ### Director of Design, core products @ Khan Academy Jan 2014 – Jan 2017 | Mountain View, CA Providing leadership, creative direction and mentoring for design teams and processes in the organization, including product planning and direction. Designed and implemented a new creative process using deep practices in design thinking, such as socially-conscious user research, rapid iteration, and prototyping. Early learning investigative project: led the creative process that includes user research, expert interviews, establishment of aesthetic principles, brainstorming, prototyping, underlying goals of the product, and game concept. Providing game design, art direction, creative direction, prototyping, illustration. Khan Academy's apps for iPad (January 2015 App of the Month on the App Store), iPhone, Android phone and tablet: Creative direction, technical training, design process management and mentorship for a design team that had never designed for mobile. Contributed design work in order to lead by example at all levels of the stack from UI architecture to pixel-perfect production. ### Interaction Designer / Prototyper @ Apple Jan 2010 – Jan 2014 | Cupertino, CA - Invented new ways for people and devices to communicate with each other in the Human Interface Device Prototyping group - Designed and prototyped experiences across iPhone, iPad, Mac, Apple TV, and more - Co-invented Force Touch, 3D Touch, and Taptic Engine technology now in the Apple Watch, Macbook, iPhone - Co-invented gestural interactions now in Vision Pro - Co-invented of Face Effects now on a social app on a device near you - Designed and prototyped interactions to help justify development of the iPad Pro, iPad mini, and Apple Pencil - Collaborated with a wide variety of teams across the company within hardware engineering, industrial design, software development, and human interface design - Designed and presented demos regularly to senior executives to help make strategic decisions on further technological investments, including acquisitions such as PrimeSense ### Senior Product Design Lead @ Apple Jan 2006 – Jan 2010 | Cupertino, CA Designed and prototyped applications across multiple platforms including iPhone, iPad and web. Responsible for a wide range of design aspects, including initial concept generation, branding, visual design and systems, interaction design of components and systems, translation of interactive components across platforms, tweaking shipping code, presenting to senior executives, writing CSS and chopping assets. Products include Find My iPhone, initial concepts for Find My Friends, the MobileMe and iCloud application suite, the news reader for Safari 1.0 on the iPhone, the first web application for viewing photos on mobile safari, and the .Mac Gallery. ### Senior Product Designer @ Microsoft Corporation Jan 2004 – Jan 2006 Working with MSX (Microsoft User Experience team) and providing design support for various product teams. Specializing in entertainment-related software (music, radio, video, movies) and information retrieval (search, information agents). Might have been the original designer on what became SongSmith. Can share early mocks upon request so that you can be the judge yourself. ### Game Developer @ Leapfrog Jan 2004 – Jan 2004 Developed educational games in Flash for the Leapster platform. ### Interaction Developer/Designer @ InterDimensions Corporation Jan 2000 – Jan 2004 Select client engagements: AOL Time Warner (aoltw.com, aoltweurope.com, pandemicfacingaids.org, corporate intranet) - created Flash movies, architected them to be easily updated by non-Flash developers - hand-coded HTML and CSS, partnered closely with developers to plug into complex administrative and database functionality - animated and programmed the interactive Flash gallery and book for pandemicfacingaids.org, won MIMC Award in 2002 Genzyme Corporation (genzyme.com) - authored online Annual Reports 2000 - 2003 in Flash, HTML, and CSS - 2001 Annual Reports won ACE Award in 2002 NASDAQ - created Flash holiday 2002 greeting animation, which was projected on the side of the NASDAQ building in Times Square, NYC Universal Music Group - designed and implemented Allison Moorer Flash jukebox - implemented media player skins themed for Mushroomhead, the Scorpion King Movie Soundtrack, and Afroman ### Teaching Assistant for Department of Architecture and Department of Computer Science @ Massachusetts Institute of Technology Jan 2000 – Jan 2000 Assisted with instruction and grading of a course on computer visualization as a representational medium based on Edward Tufte's book, Envisioning Information. Taught computer graphics methods, including 3D modeling with Alias Wavefront software, and helped students develop visual metaphors to convey information more effectively. ### Research Assistant @ IBM/Lotus Development Corporation Research Jan 1997 – Jan 2000 Designed and implemented a working prototype of a new visualization and user interface for threaded discussions. Implemented prototype using Macromedia Director with Lingo, XML, and Lotus Notes. Work shown at CSCW Conference 2000. Supervisor: Paul Moody. Designed and implemented prototypes for software that facilitates team co-authoring and team workflow. Coded in Visual Basic and Lotus Notes. ### Undergraduate Research Assistant @ MIT Media Lab Jan 1996 – Jan 1999 Designed and implemented the user interface of a software agent-based marketplace, project Kasbah, in Pattie Maes' Software Agents Group. Kasbah was a multi-agent system research project to help realize a fundamental transformation in the way people transact goods -- from requiring manual effort and constant monitoring to a system where software agents do much of the work on each user's behalf. Responsible for UI architecture, visuals, production, development and hooking into the back end with CGI scripting in C. ## Education ### M.Eng in Computer Science and Electrical Engineering Massachusetts Institute of Technology ### S.B. in Computer Science and Engineering Massachusetts Institute of Technology ### Master of Fine Arts - MFA in Creative Writing San Francisco State University ## Contact & Social - LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/maylikhoe - Portfolio: http://maylikhoe.com --- Source: https://flows.cv/mayli JSON Resume: https://flows.cv/mayli/resume.json Last updated: 2026-04-13