Siming Cybercreative is a Boston-area design studio founded by principal designer and innovation strategist Janet Si-Ming Lee. We always aspire to develop strategic and unique creative concepts that are enlightened and inspired. Simply Ming.
About Janet:
As a MITX (Massachusetts Innovation Technology Exchange) award-nominated Sr. UX / UI designer and innovation strategist, I work with startups, small businesses, and global brands in ideating, optimizing, and scaling existing product lines. Experienced with UX / UI design, eCommerce, content strategy, SWOT competitive analyses, I apply design thinking as a framework for uncovering consumer and market trends for insights into creative solutions. I love ideating new possibilities with my clients. I've even had clients change their business plans after my consultations or they may later apply my ideas into their roadmap for future Northstar project scopes. I help market and elucidate the value of my client's services. Architecting meaning. Designing enlightened experiences, I help to make your business plans come to life.
As a MITX (Massachusetts Innovation Technology Exchange) award-nominated Sr. UX / UI designer and innovation strategist, I work with startups, small businesses, and global brands in ideating, optimizing, and scaling existing product lines. Experienced with UX / UI design, eCommerce, content strategy, SWOT competitive analyses, I apply design thinking as a framework for uncovering consumer and market trends for insights into creative solutions. I love ideating new possibilities with my clients. I've even had clients change their business plans after my consultations or they may later apply my ideas into their roadmap for future Northstar project scopes. I help market and elucidate the value of my client's services. Architecting meaning. Designing enlightened experiences, I help to make your business plans come to life.
With AI's ability to quickly execute, the future of design lies in the quality and relevance of visionary ideas to each company's specific product strengths and brand positioning. While visionary ideations are the transformative value-add, UX wireframes and high-fidelity visual designs are often my concrete deliverables as proof-of-concepts for user-testing or available for a quick website deployment. Hence, I provide quality, customer-focused, and affordable responsive mobile web and visual design solutions to help you then visualize these new or existing business services and market them. I leverage a combination of Boston Globe award-winning illustration background and fine arts sensibility and over 15 years of industry-recognized experience from devising lead gen marketing strategies to creating user-experience wireframe prototypes to designing responsive mobile websites, native apps, and promotional materials. My print experience includes designing logos and identity materials, posters, ads, and more.
I have agency experience as a Sr. UX / UI Designer at various consulting agencies specializing in omni-channel digital communications, lead gen, and hi-tech innovation where I have learned some of my creative services methodologies as well as introduced new service offerings to their clients. Consulting and design agencies included: Racepoint, Mobiquity, Feinstein Kean Healthcare (a division of Ogilvy PR Worldwide), Nowspeed Marketing, CellExchange / CEE, Extraprise.
Notable companies and / or clients across industries have included: Monster Worldwide, TripAdvisor, Smart Destinations, Ettractions, McGraw-Hill Education (MHE), Savvas, Barnes & Noble College (BNED), Boston Globe, Dunkin' Donuts, Weight Watchers, Panera Bread, Vistaprint, WGBH, Intuit, Honeywell, Teradyne, QuotientADHD (formerly known as OPTAx), Kaiser Permanente, New England Baptist Hospital, US Army, State Street, XL Capital, Citigroup, Six Red Marbles, Ledge Multimedia, Beansprout Networks, Wellesley Centers for Women, MIT. As creative lead for a website selected as a finalist for a prestigious MITX Award, my work has been ranked "one of New England's best." Currently, I work at EBSCO Learning as their Sr. Interactive Designer, designing educational apps including a financial literacy app for prospective Gen Z and Y users and a professional development app. I also recently worked for Savvas (formerly known as Pearson K-12 Learning) on their UX / UI design of K-8 digital learning apps.
I hold a B.A. with Honors in Media Arts, pioneering the first independent media design and communications major at Wellesley College. My interdisciplinary degree included MIT HASS and Media Lab courses in web design and communications in addition to e-Commerce and Marketing for Entrepreneurs courses at the MIT Sloan School. In my MIT eCommerce class co-taught by legendary professors John Little and Erik Brynjolfsson, I studied the role of disintermediation and reintermediation in product and service bundling during the dotcom era. Case study analyses included content strategy for Wall Street Journal and eCommerce strategy for Home Run (online grocery delivery). I wrote a well-received independent research analysis report on the Gap, Banana Republic and Old Navy branding and e-commerce strategy. I analyzed the impact of the rise of eCommerce on traditional brick and mortar commerce and print catalogues; brand development for different target audiences and subsidiaries. In addition, I studied philosophy, personality psychology, sociology, anthropology, macroeconomics, microeconomics, econometrics, health economics, Chinese economy, biology, management basics. I continued my graphic design studies in typography and ad concepting at MassArt.
Throughout my life, my motto has been — if it doesn't exist yet, create it. I designed my own independent major at Wellesley. My interdisciplinary undergraduate studies in media arts at Wellesley and its brother school MIT inspired me to extend that academic network beyond college for project collaboration and inspiration. Thus, as a recent college alumna in the then new field of media arts, I founded WAAM (Wellesley Alumnae & Affiliates in Multimedia), a network of Wellesley and MIT alumni dedicated to entrepreneurship, professional development, and pioneering creative projects. I created the topic agenda and coordinated dinner discussions with guest speakers on educational topics that included: evolutionary artificial intelligence, online communities, SEO and social media, multimedia, sound design, consulting, and organization in hi-tech startups. I organized public exhibitions of WAAM projects at the Boston Cyberarts Festival and Somerville Open Studios.
In order to provide more holistic, informed, and insightful services to my clients, I believe in being a student of life, constantly seeking creative and intellectual inspiration. For example, I delight in international travel, touring art museums, attending educational talks, and reading articles on many different topics for creative and intellectual inspiration. I enjoy learning how to make different multiethnic dishes especially stews to expand my understanding of different spice palettes and sauce creation. I made dishes such as: Filipino adobo chicken, Japanese nasu dengaku, French coq au vin, Egyptian Molukhea, Persian fesenjan, Ethiopian chicken doro wot, West African peanut stew, Belgian waterzooi, etc. In addition, I love hosting regular film night discussions with friends in my Impromptu group as a platform for philosophical analysis of metaphors and thematic content on films that explored artificial intelligence and futurism, Spanish surrealism, linguistics and theories of mind, meta-life contemplations, etc. Films included: Krzysztof Kieślowski's "Trois Couleurs" and "Double Life of Veronique"; Wong Kar Wai's "2046"; Hirokazu Kore-eda's "AfterLife"; Guillermo del Toro's "Pan's Labyrinth" and "Shape of Water"; Richard Linklater's "Before Sunrise" trilogy; "Midnight in Paris"; "Dorian Gray"; "Triangle of Sadness"; "Poor Things"; "Malcolm X"; "Ex Machina"; "Her", "The Linguists", and more.
I love the intersection of community service, philosophy, cultural arts, and innovation. I was selected by the City of Cambridge to serve as an advisory board member on the Harvard Square Kiosk and Plaza redesign project in competitive bid for project participation. I provided strategic and tactical proposals to the city on design of the "Out of the Town News" and plaza areas. I created proposals for business development, event programming, and innovative concepts for how technology could be applied for news and events aggregation. My team and I offered guidelines to architects and placemaking consultants in consideration of experience design and programming objectives. I explored and debated concepts with fellow board advisors—business association heads and consultants, architects, Harvard and MIT professors, historians, etc. I collaborated with the Harvard Square Neighborhood Association to develop proposals and build community activism around city developments.
I look forward to helping you as a company meet your business objectives and innovate to strengthen your service offerings or make the value of your services more transparent. If you are an individual seeking a way to creatively connect your diverse interests into a meaningful new career direction or create a new startup, I would love to apply my experience with startup and global brands to help you actualize your dreams.