Petra Studios. AI for Humans.

Founded by Fiona Yang, on a mission to make AI less artificial.

San Francisco

About

Fiona Yang is a designer, educator, and product leader with nearly two decades of experience across Disney, Apple, Meta, Uber, and Microsoft. Through Petra Studios, she explores new interaction models and designs AI that expands human potential.

Gallery

• Consele — Personal AI for reflection and growth. Wearable · App · Web
• Azore — Finding stillness through sound. App · Web
• Hey Sakura — Small moments of encouragement through poetry. App · Web
• Fred — Comfort and companionship inspired by emotional support animals. App
• Fionabooth — Making ordinary moments memorable. App · Web
• Freetime — A program for reclaiming your time and attention. App · Web

Future Experiments: Wearables, Ambient Intelligence, Memory, Cognition, Human Potential

Field Notes

Observations by F. Yang · Since 2006

• The best tool is the one you forget is there. It works best when it fades into the background. The measure of good design is how little it asks of us.
• The things we build shape us. Products do more than solve problems. They influence habits, expectations, and culture. Every interface is, in some way, a proposal for how people should live.
• Beauty in software is not decoration. It is evidence of care, compressed into every margin and transition. The details are not the details. They are the design.
• The things we return to usually took time to form. Digital experiences deserve the same thoughtfulness.
• Attention is finite and non-renewable. Attention is a resource. Products that demand it endlessly eventually become indistinguishable from noise.
• Design is needed most when things move fastest. Technology accelerates by default. Meaning, trust, and restraint do not. As new tools emerge, the need for thoughtful design becomes more urgent, not less.
• Intelligence should compound, not atrophy. AI should expand human capability, not replace it. Any system that diminishes curiosity, judgment, or memory should be questioned.
• Trust is designed. Checks and balances exist because power does not regulate itself. Governance keeps responsibility and benefits from becoming too concentrated, creating the trust that allows systems to endure.
• The future is not inevitable. It is designed. The web was shaped by millions of decisions. AI will be no different. People are participants in this transition, not passive observers of it.
• The next interface should disappear. The future of AI may not live on our faces. The best interactions are often the least visible, demanding less attention while enabling more.
• Progress is measured not only by what is created, but by who benefits. Technology changes societies. The question is not only what becomes possible, but who benefits when it does.
• Creating new problems is not innovation. Technology should spend more time solving existing human problems and less time searching for reasons to exist.