A multidisciplinary creative director focused on concept development, system-level design and experiential futures from early exploration through launch.
Stella (Qinqin) Yang is a multidisciplinary creative director working across concept development, system-level design and experiential futures from exploration through execution.
Her current focus is translating emerging AI capabilities into usable workflows, prototypes, and creative systems, bridging exploration with concrete next steps in fast-paced environments. Her work blends product innovation, experience design, strategic foresight, and creative production to develop frameworks that can operate under real constraints rather than remain purely conceptual.
She is the founder of Actual Fiction, a creative practice exploring new infrastructures for imagination and future-making. Its core project, Actual Future OS, is an AI-native creative system she is developing as a living environment for working with uncertainty, supporting signal sensing, pattern exploration, and early-stage direction finding that can be carried into real projects.
Alongside, she serves as International Partnerships Lead at the Global Design Futures Network (GDFN), building collaborations across design, research, and technology. She previously co-founded alterR.studio, examining cultural, social, and technological shifts through system-level design.
Her practice moves fluidly between research, strategy, and speculative design, often using storytelling and designed artifacts to probe culture shift and future living. She holds a Bachelor of Science in Electrical Engineering with a minor in Art History from the University of California, Los Angeles, and a Master of Fine Arts in Design and Technology from Parsons School of Design. She also studied architecture from Design Discovery program at the Harvard Graduate School of Design. Her work has been exhibited and recognized by the World Science Fiction Convention, Falling Walls Science Summit, Hyundai Motorstudio, Lumen Prize, Fast Company Innovation by Design, Core77, and WIRED Japan Creative Hack, and she holds several patents for innovative design concepts.
While her work often begins in early exploration, she has extensive experience carrying ideas through production, launch, and adoption at scale. Her professional experience spans the mobile innovation team at J.P. Morgan Chase, senior creative planning at OUTPUT, and the Creative Science Track at NEW INC under New Museum. She has led creative work for the Tencent Science and Technology Museum, Burberry, the Palace Museum, and global product launch for Transsion Inifinix NOTE, and has collaborated with Boston Scientific, Uniqlo, and LVMH on next-generation products, experiences, and future strategies.
Currently based in Los Angeles, with past chapters across Tokyo, Shanghai, New York, San Francisco, and Paris, she works with creative teams, organizations and individuals to develop concepts, define creative direction, and build working frameworks and prototypes.
You can find her thinking and ongoing exploration on Substack and if you want to know when and how she works best, you can find it here: A User Guide to Working With Me. And if you want to talk, collaborate, or explore ideas, feel free to reach out on LinkedIn or stellayang908@gmail.com
Always open to connecting ︎