Embedded Files
General Motors
General Motors
Edison Chen · Principal Software Engineer
August 20, 2024, Edison worked with Nina on the same team
I've had the pleasure of working with Nina at General Motors, where she excelled as a Lead Product Designer on projects involving fleet cameras, AI, and computer vision. Her unique ability to translate complex technologies into intuitive, user-friendly designs made a significant impact on our team’s success. Nina combines technical expertise with design acumen, consistently delivering innovative and scalable solutions to address business challenges. As a design lead, she fostered a collaborative environment, guiding the team with creativity and precision. Beyond her technical skills, Nina is a supportive colleague, always willing to share her knowledge. I highly recommend her for any design lead role; her contributions would be a valuable asset to any organization.
Mani Browder · Lead Content Designer / UX Writer
August 21, 2024, Mani worked on the same team as Nina
I had the pleasure of working with Nina on several projects at General Motors. Whether it was designing conceptual UI or drafting customer-facing literature, I appreciated Nina’s integrity around verifying the accuracy of the information, and her exquisite attention to detail. I saw Nina gracefully wrangle projects that were both technically complex and involved multiple (and sometimes conflicting) stakeholders. She was organized, respectful, responsive even to the smallest question or concern, collaborative, a great listener, and able to synthesize complex information into usable, streamlined UI. Nina will be an asset to any team she joins!
Daniela Decoud · Product Manager
September 5, 2024, Daniela worked on the same team as Nina
I had the privilege of working with Nina, and she is one of the best designers I have worked with. What sets her apart isn’t just her amazing craft, but how quickly she grasps the product vision and the bigger picture, connecting teams to ensure everything aligns seamlessly. She is a pleasure to work with—always listening, absorbing feedback, and synthesizing complex ideas effortlessly. Nina is also an excellent systems thinker, understanding the broader context and how all the pieces and players fit together.
Beyond her design skills, she is an inspiring mentor. She genuinely cares about the personal growth of those around her, offering support, positive energy, and keeping the team unified.
I am so grateful for the chance to have worked with her, and I hope our paths cross again in the future.
Alex Castellarnau · Head of UX
Nov 2, 2023
Nina's relentless aim at solving problems and finding answers is an amazing asset to propel forward any team she is a part of.
Brijesh Patel · Senior Hardware Technical Program Manager at GM
September 26, 2023 recognition to design partner Mariya Voynova and me
Creating a comprehensive Customer Journey Map is a complex task that requires a deep understanding of our customers' needs, pain points, and expectations. Your ability to capture these insights and translate them into a visually compelling flow is a testament to your expertise and commitment to our team's success.
Thank you for your outstanding contributions.
Ellen Francik · Director HW UX at GM
September 27, 2023 in response to Brijesh's recognition to us
Thanks, Brijesh, and thank you to Mariya and Nina, who've been striving to convey interaction flows in the most informative, complete, and compelling form for all our cross-functional partners.
Mariya Voynova · Designer at GM
September 20, 2023, design partner
I want to take a moment to express my appreciation for Nina Shih's incredible contributions to the TG 2.0 project and her awesome teamwork as a design partner. Nina has been a rock star throughout the TG 2.0 journey, putting in serious work on prototyping, meticulously dissecting scenarios, and paying close attention to the nitty-gritty details. Her prototypes have been game-changers, not just effective but really helpful for all our teams!
Nina, a big shoutout to you for what you've brought to our team, you rock!
Ryan Braunstein · Mechanical Engineering Manager
September 21, 2023 boosted Mariya's recognition
couldn't agree more, love the partnership with engineering and working out the details on UX/workflows!
Ellen Francik · Director HW UX at GM
September 26, 2023 in response to Mariya's recognition to us
Really happy to see this coming together – figuring out what is not only complete but effective design communication for this complex product has been a journey. Appreciation to you, Nina, as we level up!
Fitbit, Google
Fitbit, Google
Raymond Stone • Design at Google
January 21, 2023, Raymond reported directly to Nina
Nina is a great manager who captained the design direction of her product area. She has an eye for design that can only be acquired through years of applied practice in high stakes production environments, making her vital to both the product design language and design critiques involving design support. Her leadership capabilities enable her to facilitate meetings, whether they are engineering focused or UX focused. She personally oversaw my design work and has gone above and beyond to provide tremendous support to the upward trajectory of my design career. She is the biggest cheerleader for her teammates, regularly recognizing them for their contributions. Nina has the superior organization skills and leadership skills needed to juggle numerous projects and subprojects within the greater team as well as filling in for higher level managers when they are absent. I would highly recommend Nina for any design and/or leadership position.
Mengyuan Tan • Designer at Google
Jan 30, 2023, Mengyuan work with Nina on the same team
Nina is one of the best design mentors I met at Google. She deeply cares about my personal growth and offers help to guide me to discover my own path. Her aspiration of designing for health, education and environment also inspires me so much. Every team would feel sooo lucky to have her as a leader.
Andrei Serea • Staff Software Engineer at Google
January 20, 2023, Andrei worked with Nina on the same team
I had the pleasure to meet and work with Nina on a very resource-constrained project that required a lot of creativity to move it forward. I am impressed by Nina's ability to act in multiple roles simultaneously and at a high level. She is thoughtful, resourceful, creative and you can count on her to push things forward, no matter how powerful the headwinds might be. Expect to see her be willing to and proactively contribute well beyond the boundaries of her role.
Qian He • Senior Research Scientist at Google
January 24, 2023, Qian worked with Nina on the same team
For a long time, I thought Nina was a PM with a UX designer working with her until I realized that it was just her doing both jobs! -- just to give you an example of how productive Nina is. It was a great pleasure working with her, and I would give her my full recommendation.
Dominique Fong • Senior UX Writer at Google
February 10, 2023, Dominique worked with Nina on the same team
Nina is a thoughtful design leader who cares deeply about people and products. She is a great listener who is always open to new ideas and suggestions and willing to see things from another person's perspective, which makes her an effective team leader and advocate. During one of our projects together, she handled highly complex flows fraught with legal, privacy, and bioethical considerations with attention to the smallest details like the tone of voice for a header and the biggest picture like the overall value prop and user journey and how it fits into Fitbit's larger business goals. I highly recommend her.
Narges Jalali • Senior Product Designer at Google
January 22, 2023, Narges worked with Nina on the same team
I have had the pleasure of working with Nina at Google for just under a year. She is an exceptional design lead with a wealth of knowledge and experience that she brings to the table. Nina is always willing to take on difficult tasks and strives to produce successful results. She is a hard worker, reliable, and a great team player. Her ability to work with multiple stakeholders and solve complex UX problems is remarkable. Nina is a talented, knowledgeable and passionate professional who I would highly recommend to any UX team. Her dedication to her work is outstanding, and I am certain she would be an invaluable asset to any team.
Heiko Maiwand • Design at Google
January 20, 2023, Heiko worked with Nina on the same team
Nina is an outstanding designer, thinker, and leader. She gets things done. When working with Nina, I am always impressed by her ability to organize and manage complex problems and stakeholders. She has a wealth of experience and pushes projects forward with detailed designs and solutions that address constraints and can thread the needle in the most complex scenarios. In my time working with her I saw her tackle organizational, tactical, and strategic projects.
Nina is a delight to work with because of her empathy and ability to make people feel heard. I give my full endorsement and would love any opportunity to work with Nina in the future
Jamie Flores • Software Engineer at Fitbit
January 25, 2023, Jamie worked with Nina on the same team
Nina is an incredible designer and a delight to work with. I worked with her on the Google Health Studies app at Google for 1.5 years. I think UX designers always have to balance the perfect UI with the simplest technical solutions and Nina is very good at conquering this dilemma! She fights for the needs of the user while at the same time actively seeking advice from the engineers she works with about timelines and technical limitations. She communicates the rationale behind design choices clearly and is confident enough to take a stance on design principles when needed, but flexible enough to adapt her design choices for the benefit of her teammates.
Beyond her work as a designer, she is a great coworker and peer. She is the first to check on her peers when they are sick or congratulate them on accomplishments. She bolsters the team camaraderie and energy and is a positive addition professionally and personally to any team. I would love to work with her again one day.
Nest
Nest
Dany Ahsue • Software Engineer Manager at Google
August 22, 2019, Dany worked with Nina on the same team
I have worked with Nina on various versions of the Nest Thermostat. She is really fantastic to work with, always eager to push for product excellence while working hard to get things done beautifully and on time.
Thermostat UX was the best when Nina was around!
Romain Laboisse • Software Engineer Manager at Google
August 26, 2019, Romain worked with Nina on the same team
In the 5 years that I have been working with Nina on Nest products, I have found that she was a UX designer with a holistic approach to design.
Her involvement covered everything from device ID, to light or sound language, to embedded software UI, and finally to mobile app design.
Being able to influence the various parts of the user interface with the devices and their environment allowed Nina to ensure a consistent and intuitive experience for our users.
Nina has delivered several new Nest devices to market, as well as major improvements to existing products.
Working with Nina has been a fruitful experience, and her team acts as a link between us (mobile engineering) and the rest of the engineering teams.
Matt MacLaurin • UX Director at Nest
February 2, 2023, Matt managed Nina directly
Nina is a true UI designer and takes the invisible interactions just as seriously as the beautiful pixels. Her work at Nest is in my scrapbook of all time great stuff, particularly her work on out-of-box experience for some very complicated devices with many possible failure states. Nina could easily teach interaction design at the PhD level and the world would be a better place for it.
Not all designers can create airtight specs - Nina does it better than many engineers.
Nina is also a wonderful human being and a great vibe always. Hire her immediately and thank me later.
Patrick Lister • Design Manager at Nest
October 14, 2019, Patrick managed Nina directly
Nina is a designer, collaborator, architect and researcher A caring individual, a talented professional and a core contributor to any project she works on.
Nina creates thoughtful, intuitive and well-structured experiences for many user types. She deftly crafts her designs for the first experience, the 100th and for the 2 year roadmap of new features. Nina does this through tireless systems architecture, cross-functional teamwork and user research. She evaluates all feedback and incorporates new ideas, lessons learned and testing results into future iterations of her work. When one of her projects ships, Nina's work is seamlessly infused into so many parts of the product, it's difficult to find areas she didn't influence.
Navaneeta Dorbala • UX researcher at Nest
February 2, 2023, Navaneeta worked with Nina on the same team
I loved working with Nina as a cross functional partner on thermostats. She would proactively connect the dots and ultimately led the team to keep up momentum and stay unified even during difficult times. In the midst of diverse opinions, I remember Nina to prioritize product excellence, which enabled me to focus on research planning while putting the user first. I feel fortunate to have had the opportunity to work with an individual like Nina, who steps up and takes initiative and would most certainly want to do so again!
Stella Rossi • Staff Engineer Manager at Nest, Embedded SW & Mobile
August 26, 2019, Stella worked with Nina on the same team
I had the great pleasure of working with Nina for several years at Nest. We were on a number of complicated project launches. Nina’s designs are detailed, thorough and always aligned with product goals and the user’s needs. She is super creative and there is not a UX problem she couldn’t improve upon. She also takes the time to discuss and take in feedback and concerns from the engineering teams. She is absolutely one of my favorite designers to work with.
Samsung
Samsung
Daesung Kim • UX Designer at Samsung
June 21, 2015, Daesung worked with Nina but on different teams
Nina is the most impressive person I met in both work and personal aspects.
I met her in a situation that two other teams in a same company accidentally working on similar projects. Usually that kind of situation could lead to political collision and eventually one of them will be killed. However, Nina was willing to sacrifice and modify her team’s work to make two similar-but-different things aligned to come up with better concepts. I believe her devotional attitude was the key to have better one for the whole team.
I have witnessed her outstanding practical design skills, too. She, as an interaction designer, can find the most crucial users' needs and problems and make nicely designed solution with them. The deliverables she produced were very easy to understand.
I was too influenced by her positive and diligent personality even though we were in a tight work schedule. That still remains the best memory while I was in Samsung.
Christoph Dressel • Partner & COO of Impossible
February 6, 2014, Christoph worked with Nina but were at different companies
Nina understands amazingly well to direct a team with her gentle, intelligent and educated way of being. Nina is also a true power house and relentless worker and as such is leading by example. I was always fascinated by the degree of responsibility and diligence she is able to show every single day.
Any team or project profits heavily from having her on board.
It was always a great pleasure working with her and I hope to do so again very soon.
Guy Bar-Nahum • VP, Mobile UX Lab
January 27, 2014, Guy was senior to Nina but didn't manage Nina directly
Nina is a smart, talented, prolific and proactive design lead. A true team player, she is a "load bearing beam" in any organization she is part of. She is a natural leader, calm and supporting, but also challenging and empowering.
Nina is a creative power house, with unique insights into usability and the emotional and cultural needs of users. These insights are invaluable in developing services and experiences for a future where the web and mobile would be closer to us than ever before. Nina can take a breakthrough rough idea and iterate on it with the team until it matured into a fine balance of design, innovation and utility.
Nine is ruthless. She simply does whatever is needed to accomplish the vision set up by the team. She never gets stuck. Wherever there is a gap in the project, Nina will put down extra hours to address it. She is a great organizer and stream liner of work and team life, organically makes things happen in small tight knit groups.
As a natural leader, people listen and follow her. She seamlessly work with anyone from any discipline, regardless of seniority, role or organization. She is confident and pleasant, discussing ideas and opportunities in an insightful and supportive way, with careful listening and challenging that usually leads to better design outcome.
Nina would be a great addition to any creative organization. Given the chance, I would love to work with her again.
Kim Hansen • CTO of Impossible
January 23, 2014, Kim worked with Nina but were at different companies
I worked closely with Nina on multiple projects with tight deadlines and advanced interfaces. She was always attacking every situation with a very positive attitude, while both understanding and helping us find solutions for technical limitations. This made it a joy to work with her, even when deadlines were tight and the stress level high. Her ability to clearly show every detail that could be improved in the user interface was always a great time save for us and a tremendous help for us to build great products together. I wish there was a Nina on every team we work with.
Prashant Desai • Design Leadership at Meta
March 18, 2014, Prashant worked with Nina on the same team
Nina Shih is unequivocally, one of the smartest UX Designers I've had the privilege of working with. Her design ethic is defined by sincerity, perseverance, curiosity, and a healthy dose of skepticism. Coming up with good ideas isn't difficult for Nina. Her passion is best demonstrated in her uncanny ability to transform good ideas into great ideas.
Nina doesn't just talk the talk, she walks the walk. What separates Nina from her peers is that she is a consummate UX thinker and teammate. She challenges herself and those around her to work hard, question their assumptions, thoroughly explore design possibilities, and continuously learn by building. Nina is a fantastic teammate - I know for a fact that I’m a better designer having had the opportunity to work with her. I’d highly recommend Nina to any team looking for one of the best UX designers in the business.
Nicolai Munk Petersen • Sr. Lead Experience Engineer
April 14, 2014, Nicolai worked with Nina on the same team
I have been working with Nina during the past 2 years. I was first working with her as technical advisor for the UX team and later as the technical lead on a larger project. Nina was my primary point of contact with the UX team.
She excelled as the UX lead that could bridge technology and design with ease and for being able to align her team with the technical team’s agenda.
Nina is very dedicated and make great effort to incorporate all technical opportunities in the experience she is in charge of. It is always a pleasure working with her and I never hesitate bringing her in on new projects.
Microsoft
Microsoft
Robert Dietz • UX Director of Office Labs
May 2, 2011, Robert managed Nina directly
Nina is a rare combination of creative energy and technical excellence. She has an ability to tackle complex problems and make them tangible to others. She's collaborative by nature but can then go heads down and be increadibly productive on her own. She has better PM skills than a lot of PM's I've worked with, managing details and timelines with ease. Self-motivated, Nina will challenge convention in process, organization or solutions. Her HCI background made her invaluable in evaluating research results, methodologies and recommendations. And don't let the humble demeanor fool you- there's an increadibly smart, resourceful designer ready and willing to tackle any problem. Most people this smart and talented come with an oversized ego and can be difficult to manage but Nina is just really fun to work with. We already miss her here and I would welcome the opportunity to work with her again.
Jeff Berg • Principal Software Engineering Manager
October 20, 2011, Jeff worked with Nina on the same team
Nina was extremely productive, worked well with other disciplines, and created great designs. What really stood out for me was that Nina really understood the product, the users, and the interaction challenges we were facing (more so than any other designer I've worked with). I would love to work with Nina again.
February 10, 2011, Nathan worked with Nina on the same team
Nina is an excellent colleague and I am thrilled to recommend her. As a researcher, I am often seeking out collaborative partnerships with strong, well-rounded designers who are strong in their core skill set and willing to stretch into research, as well. Nina shows excellence in her work as a designer while effectively pushing on UX research to inform the design process. She works well with others, and is often driving the team forward with energy, passion, and focus. She attends to details in an impressive manner, and I am always confident that she will execute on the action items that she takes on. I have no doubt that Nina will succeed in any work environment of her choosing. Please feel free to contact me for further information on my experience working with Nina as I would be happy to provide more details.
Yahoo!
Yahoo!
Chris Jaffe • Chief Design Officer • Youtube
February 7, 2011, Chris managed Nina directly
Nina is a creative powerhouse! She continually generates compelling new interaction design ideas and fresh approaches to solving hard problems. Nina worked for me, fresh out of graduate school, as an interaction designer on a mammoth-scale web app, a difficult and stressful project. Her work was always innovative, detailed, well executed, and exceptionally well thought out...And she always had a great attitude! I would hire her again in a second!...
Philipe Piernot • Director of User Experience Design
February 2, 2011, Phillipe managed Nina directly
Nina is an outstanding interaction designer: she is very sharp, amazingly fast, hard working, and very creative. She handles complex requirements with ease and comes up with elegant solutions. Nina works well with other people, be it engineers, product managers, or fellow designers. It was a true pleasure having Nina in my team and should the opportunity occur, I would hire her again without hesitation.
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