Project
X ACADEMY
ABOUT
X ACADEMY is the largest and most influential technology-focused summer program and community in China since 2016. This 14-day innovative learning experience occurs annually and gathers 300-400 young scientists, engineers, designers, artists, and humanists from around the world. Here, they create, connect, and change the lives of millions.
Role
Project Lead (2023); Creative Advisor (2024-2026)
SKILL
The Goal
To help young people reconnect and rediscover human connection in the post-pandemic world through transformative, creative education.
YEAR
2025
Process & Results
The first challenge was addressing the significant drop in enrollment interest caused by post-pandemic uncertainty. After conducting internal stakeholder interviews and facilitating design workshops to identify blind spots in our approach, I created five spotlight articles for WeChat that showcased different aspects of the summit experience through interactive narrative design. This content campaign achieved over 100,000 views—the first time we reached this milestone since returning to in-person programming—and drove a 150% increase in student applications, successfully filling the summit to capacity.
Learning Design Process
Like Disney creates magical escapes from everyday reality, I designed the X Academy 14-day experience as an immersive sanctuary where students could step away from their daily concerns and focus purely on learning, creating, and connecting with one another. The goal was to craft an environment so engaging and distinct that participants felt transported into a world entirely separate from their usual routines.
Central to this vision was launching a series of workshops through what we called "Mind Cabin"—covering sex education, death education, and love education. These topics, largely absent from Chinese curricula, consistently reached full capacity of 30 students per session across 10+ workshops. Rather than traditional lectures, each workshop was carefully designed to be interactive and game-based, making it easier to engage young participants on emotionally complex subjects.
Learning Design Process
In the face of post-pandemic uncertainties, we built a hybrid online-offline ecosystem that enhanced the experience to ensure flexibility. The six virtual academy houses built in Unity gave students digital identity spaces where they could showcase their work and explore their community beyond physical boundaries. Meanwhile, the X Terminal platform built through Figjam evolved far beyond its original purpose as a schedule board—students organically transformed it into an interactive community hub, creating their own lost-and-found sections, team-finding zones, and communication channels.
I returned as a creative advisor from 2024-2025 and supervised the designing of visual materials for the summit, while also creating the X-Monolith - a 3-meter tall monument that serves as a tangible symbol of the XACADEMY community.
