We see what others don’t. Your people will notice.
If your challenge lives somewhere between behavioral insight, systems design, and social impact—you’re in the right hands.
YZDesignWorks is founded and operated by a mighty partnership:
Yuri Zaitsev has over 10 years of experience stepping into tangled messes-across industries, cultures, and continents-and coming out with something clear, sharp, and immediately useful. He has engineered laptops, robots, and market-leading, minimally invasive product lines in orthopedic surgery. He has helped communities become more resilient from the streets of Thailand to toxic workplaces in the USA. He has made justice reform through social policies a game worth winning-literally. He helps clients move through problems when the questions are messy, the data is fragmented, and the stakes are high.
When not in the field, Yuri has lectured at places with columns in front and Latin carved into stone. His approach—a hybrid of engineering, human-centered design, strategic foresight, and serious game design—shapes both his graduate courses and executive seminars in advanced research techniques. He’s taught at Stanford d.School, Stanford GSB, UC Berkeley, Harvard Business School, and given talks at numerous conferences and organizations.
Specialties: Human-centered design | Strategic foresight | Mixed-methods UX research | Systems thinking | Serious games | Engineering for impact
Kristen Pearson brings an almost unfair level of expertise to the table—deep training in archaeological science, ethnographic fieldwork, and anthropological theory, honed at Harvard and tested across continents. She is adept at bridging material culture with human complexity: her work has revealed the hidden stories in ancient garments, mapped resilience in endangered craft traditions, and uncovered the cultural logics buried in the modern small business owner identity. She’s conducted research in nomadic communities, remote museums, and the inner-city, all while wrangling languages, fibers, and frameworks with equal finesse. A Fulbright scholar and NSF fellow, Kristen doesn’t just know the methods—she helps shape them.
Whether working with first-time entrepreneurs, healthcare designers, or international heritage institutions, Kristen brings unmatched precision and care to every research engagement. When she teaches—at Harvard or out in the field—she does so with the insight of someone who’s not just studied how people live, but lived alongside them with her expertise in method and praxis. If the challenge demands rigor, empathy, and a wide-angle view—Kristen’s the one you want thinking alongside you.
Specialties: Ethnographic research | Archaeological science | Material culture | Cultural heritage methods | Cross-cultural UX research | Participatory design
Our roster also includes a set of brilliant minds from the top research institutions that are expert at mixed-methods research and implementing design solutions. We invite them specifically for their expertise in your project needs.
Specialties: Trauma Informed Design | Behavioral Design | Deep Contextual Methods | Design Ops | Accessibility Centered Design | Service Design