Peixuan Yu is an interactive news developer and visual storyteller with a passion for making the complex feel human, turning data into understanding, and systems into stories. “Design is translation,” she says. “Whether it’s climate change or policy, interactive design can reveal patterns that words alone can’t. That belief drives everything I create.”

Yu grew up in Shanghai and studied at both the Shanghai and New York campuses of New York University, which gave her a unique and powerful insight into how stories travel between languages and cultures. “I think of interactive design as a form of translation,” Yu says. “It’s a way to bridge not just words, but emotions and perspectives. Moving between Eastern and Western approaches to storytelling taught me to design with empathy before technology and to build experiences that feel human first and digital second.”

She discovered her love of design while doing undergraduate work in computer science and interactive media arts. “I was building systems and coding interactive prototypes, and I realized what truly moved me wasn’t the technology itself, but the ability to communicate ideas through interaction,” Yu says. “That realization led me to NYU’s Interactive Telecommunications Program, where I learned to merge storytelling, design, and development into one practice.

Curiosity and public impact drive Yu’s work. “I’m drawn to stories that reveal invisible systems like climate, policy, gender, and data,” she says. “I like the challenge of making those systems emotionally legible.” She’s most proud of The Doomsday Glacier, her first major independent interactive storytelling piece. “It visualizes the accelerating collapse of Antarctica’s Thwaites Glacier, which is one of the most important climate tipping points of our time,” Yu says. “I designed it as a scrollytelling experience, blending data visualization, scientific imagery, and narrative pacing to evoke both urgency and awe. The piece is foundational to how I think about merging design and science for public understanding.”