About Kayla
Kayla Xiong is a UX / Product Designer with a multidisciplinary background spanning integrated marketing, branding, and digital media. She holds a B.S. in Business, Integrated Marketing from New York University (NYU) and an M.A. in UX Design & Development from the New York Institute of Technology (NYIT).
Kayla worked with DataLynn, an AI-driven career platform, where she helped design and launch the company’s first AI-powered product, contributed to a successful MVP and early fundraising, and built a reusable design system that improved product consistency and reduced front-end development time. She conducts user research and usability testing, translating insights into clear information architecture, intuitive user flows, and scalable design solutions that balance user needs, technical constraints, and business goals.
Her earlier experience in marketing and business development sharpened her skills in audience insight, visual storytelling, and brand authenticity - perspective she now brings into product design. Kayla’s graduate work focused on HCI, information architecture, accessibility, and systems thinking, and she has designed responsive web / mobile experiences as well as 360° spatial interfaces in VR / AR apps. She combines -
√ Cross-functional mindset: making design decisions across product, business development, marketing, and engineering aspects.
√ Empathy at scale: thinking across many user types and edge cases
√ Attention to detail: informed by her fashion and content background, with pixel-level visual precision.
√ Problem-solving with ambiguity: making principled decisions when data is incomplete.
√ Simplicity first: reducing complexity without losing clarity or intent.
Outside of design, Kayla is also a fashion content creator and a musician performing under the alias Xeena. Her passion in music, fashion, and storytelling strongly influences her approach to UX: she designs experiences as sequences of emotion and energy, not just screens, where brand, function, and feeling come together in one coherent story.
Designing Personal Brands like Products
Kayla was invited back to NYU’s Wasserman Center for Career Development as an alumna guest on a podcast about “How Personal Branding Affects Our Career Path in the Digital Age.”
Drawing from her journey across integrated marketing, UX design, digital creation, and music, she framed personal branding as a form of experience design: brand sets the promise; UX delivers it across every touchpoint. She shared how she applies UX principles to personal branding and social media:
√ Treating platforms like Instagram and LinkedIn as living portfolios rather than performance stages - intentionally structured, quality > quantity.
√ Leading with values and clarity, not metrics, so the “information architecture” of who you are stays coherent and honest.
√ Designing content that educates, inspires, or entertains, then learning from what truly resonates, similar to testing and iterating on product features.
√ Structuring digital touchpoints (bio, CTA, portfolio, contact) as a clear, low-friction user flow from awareness to opportunity.
√ Prioritizing audience fit over audience size, and having the courage to pivot - as she did moving from marketing into UX while continuing her path as a musician.
As AI makes it easier to generate infinite, repetitive content, Kayla believes the real value of a designer lies in adding meaning, telling story, taste, and intentionality. Her perspective on personal branding is grounded, practical, and deeply human: a brand should feel coherent, livable, and aligned with the experiences it promises, not just optimized for engagement.