When you meet Robin Ahn, now an award-winning designer at Cypris, it’s hard not to notice her dual passion for technology and education. Behind the sleek interfaces and UX frameworks she crafts lies a deep commitment to teaching and protecting the next generation of digital citizens. From leading national design projects at Wayfair to helping teenagers stay safe online, Ahn’s story is as much about educating others as it is about designing for them.
From Researcher to Advocate: The Social Media Lab
Before jumping into the industry, Ahn spent her early years at Cornell University’s Social Media Lab, where she worked under the mentorship of Professor Natalie Bazarova and Dr. Diana Freed- two leading scholars in digital safety and communication technology.
With their guidance, Ahn examined how technology could both connect and harm young users, focusing on youth digital safety, privacy, and security. Her research explored how parents, educators, and teens respond to online risks such as cyberbullying and grooming.
“I wasn’t just reading papers,” Ahn recalls. “I was meeting teenagers and their parents, seeing firsthand how they used social platforms, and learning what made them feel unsafe. After months of qualitative coding, I told myself- if I ever become a mom, I’m setting real guardrails on Discord, YouTube, and definitely Yubo.”
Her work contributed to the development of moderation strategies and educational materials accessible to users of all ages. Ahn’s investigative curiosity pushed her further- she analyzed how grooming behaviors spread across Discord dating servers and Instagram DMs, uncovering patterns that escalated online exchanges to in-person meetings at malls. These insights helped the lab prototype technological interventions for early detection of predatory behavior.
Her research soon reached an international audience. In 2023, BBC journalist Nalini Sivathasan contacted Ahn after reading her Medium article, “Gifting Feature on TikTok: Manipulation of Well-Intended Features Enables Abuse.” The BBC later produced “TikTok and the Digital Pimps: Eye Investigates”, a documentary that aired globally in March 2025, exposing how livestreaming and gifting tools were being weaponized to exploit teens. Ahn’s early work at Cornell provided crucial groundwork for this documentary and helped shape global understanding of how platform design can unintentionally enable harm.
Designing for Scale at Wayfair
During her last year at Cornell, Ahn took her research-driven mindset to Wayfair, where she worked as a Product Designer and Researcher for the Warehousing and Fulfillment Network (WFN) team. Over the course of a year-long co-op, internship, and design contract, she helped modernize the digital tools used in Wayfair’s physical fulfillment centers.
Her work ranged from optimizing shipment workflows to building self-service tools that reduced operational bottlenecks. But what made her stand out wasn’t just the quality of her designs- it was her human-centered leadership.
“When I started, I was drowning in acronyms,” Ahn says with a grin. “I had no idea how to design Scan Gun UI, or even what a SKU or a pallet really meant. But I learned quickly- mostly by asking questions and spending time with our warehouse associates. Some days I was in a New Jersey warehouse studying transshipment processes; other days I was at our Boston retail store, tracing how barcodes were printed and scanned in real time. That’s when I realized design only works when you’re willing to get your hands a little dirty.”
Ahn’s collaborative energy extended beyond her desk. As Co-op Captain for more than 200 interns, she launched initiatives like Coffee Chat Bingo- which sparked over 250 networking conversations in a single week- and Out-of-Towners Small Groups, a monthly community-building program for students far from home. Her Boba and Board Games Night drew 150 attendees and became a staple of the intern experience.
She laughs when she recalls her farewell award: “Most Likely to Be Future CEO.”
Teaching the Next Generation: From Cornell to the Community
Even as her design career took off, Ahn remained passionate about education and mentorship. At Cornell, she served as Head Teaching Assistant for INFO 3450: Human-Computer Interaction, one of the university’s most popular design courses. Over four semesters, she led a team of 20 TAs, created a Figma workshop series, and developed a full curriculum covering color theory, component design, and prototyping fundamentals.
“I’d never taught in front of a crowd that large before- 300 students in class and 80 signing up for my Figma workshops,” Ahn recalls. “I was visibly shaking the first few times I taught, but watching students light up as they built their first prototypes made every bit of nerves worth it.”
She also taught INFO 2450: Communication and Technology, hosting weekly office hours, grading assignments, and mentoring students who were new to UX principles.
Beyond campus, Ahn carried her passion for accessible education into the Ithaca community through DTI Outreach, a Cornell Digital Tech & Innovation initiative. Together with fellow students, she hosted beginner-friendly workshops at the Tompkins County Public Library, teaching children aged 8-14 how to code with Scratch and introducing locals to the basics of design and prototyping.
“Going from Cornell to downtown Ithaca and walking all the way back up is a bit of a hike for sure,” Ahn laughs. “But honestly, I was excited to go down every time to teach familiar faces. I was surprised by how quickly they picked up on the coding and Figma we were teaching- it took me way longer than that to learn. Kids these days are super smart. It was also cool to see how some clearly had a knack for coding, while others were natural designers.”
From Local Impact to Global Recognition
What began as a curiosity for how people interact with technology has since evolved into a global design career. Today, Ahn channels her multifaceted background- research, education, and design- into her work at Cypris, where she leads design for AI-powered research products used by R&D teams around the world.
At Cypris, she was hired as the company’s first in-house product designer and tasked with defining its visual and interaction language from the ground up. Her work introduced elegant solutions to complex problems: an Advanced Search system with Boolean builders and real-time feedback, redesigned dashboards and side panels that improve navigation, and a dedicated Research Monitoring product that tracks citations, legal events, and AI-detected trends.
Over time, those quiet design decisions began to speak for themselves. What started as internal improvements soon drew external attention- culminating in international recognition for Ahn’s leadership in product design.
Her work has since earned multiple honors, including two Silver MUSE Awards for Best User Experience (Website-SaaS), three Silver Vega Awards for Best UI-Product Interfaces, UX-Product, and UX-Communication, and a Silver W3 Award for General Websites-Web Applications and Services. She was also shortlisted in Design Dispatch’s “Future Forward” Designs for Summer 2025.
Still, despite the accolades, Ahn’s motivation remains unchanged.
“Every design decision I make traces back to the people who use it- students, warehouse associates, parents, teens,” she says. “Educating others keeps me grounded. It reminds me that design is only meaningful when it’s shared.”
Closing Thoughts
Robin Ahn’s career bridges worlds- academic research and corporate design, youth advocacy and community outreach. Whether she’s mentoring students, building safer social technologies, or improving logistics software, her throughline is clear: design as education, education as impact.
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