# Ji Su Hiatt

I’m a design technologist.

Currently building agentic commerce and crypto at Visa. MBA candidate at UC Berkeley Haas. Based in San Francisco.

## A few things about me

- I'm currently building agents that shop for humans autonomously.
- Lately, I've been interested in building agentic workflows, better developer tools, and helping product teams build, experiment, and learn faster.
- My title has usually been 'designer', but I talk to users, build what I design, and think like a product manager.
- Everyone on the team should talk to users (engineers included). I'm known for making this into a team sport.
- I like ambitious work, but prefer to work with people who don't take themselves too seriously. Please send memes.
- I live in SF. I moved here mostly for the trees and fog.

## Work

### Enabling autonomous shopping with agents

Visa · 2026 · AI shopping agent

Designed and built a shopping agent to demonstrate the Visa Intelligent Commerce APIs. Exploring autonomous and human-in-the-loop agentic workflows for consumer shopping and developer/vibe-coding use cases.

### Developer guide for trusted AI agents

Visa · 2026 · Interactive developer guide

Designed an interactive guide that walks developers through Visa’s Trusted Agent Protocol, which lets AI agents identify themselves to merchants.

### [Design studio for low-code payment components](/projects/component-studio)

NMI · 2025 · Component Studio

Built a design studio on NMI’s Appearance API, so companies can create a theme once and apply it across low-code components for easy customization.

### [Improving developer onboarding to payments](/projects/sandbox)

NMI · 2025 · Developer sandbox & self-serve signup

Cut developer onboarding from a multi-week, sales-led process to minutes with a sandbox environment and self-service sign-up.

### [Clarifying investor portfolio performance](/projects/fundrise)

Fundrise · 2023 · Portfolio performance dashboard

Made fund and asset performance legible at every level of detail, improving sentiment among the advanced investors driving the largest investments.

### [Increasing card repayment and retention](/projects/missionlane)

Mission Lane · 2020 · Mobile app redesign

Lifted repayment rates, retention, and credit usage through a mobile app redesign that raised the app store rating from 2.8 to 4.9 stars.

## Experiments

### [Cozy walks through the Presidio](/builds/presidio)

A little world

A small, playable world inspired by San Francisco’s Presidio.

### [Plastic DNA Model](/builds/plastic-dna)

An interactive model

An old molecular model kit, reimagined in the browser using real DNA structure data.

### [Make a mini](/make-a-mini)

A little tool

Turn a photo into a pixel-art portrait or a playful video game avatar.

## About

Hi! I’m Ji Su, a design technologist and product builder in SF. I went to grad school planning to teach biochemistry, but on a whim, signed up for my first hackathon and got a taste of product development and entrepreneurship. I’ve been designing and building products ever since.

I’ve never felt like I belonged neatly in one role—design, product, or engineering. I like understanding problems, designing solutions, building them, and testing what actually works. With AI blurring those boundaries, there’s never been a better time to be a hybrid product builder.

Lately, I’ve been exploring two big questions:

### What makes people trust AI agents enough to let them act on their behalf?

I’ve been designing agentic experiences, and I think trust is one of the most interesting design challenges ahead. My hypothesis is that trust comes from the right combination of context, visibility into what agents are doing, and the ability to step in and take control. I think designing for agents will require us to think beyond chat interfaces and return to systems and service design.

### How do we help product teams become better builders?

As AI makes building faster and more accessible, I’m interested in how we make sure we’re building better, not just more. I love helping teams adopt new tools, experiment with ideas, and learn from real user behavior. I’m also a big believer that talking to users should be a team sport. Engineers included.

Outside of work, I enjoy exploring cities and nature, collecting stationery, going on logistically challenging road trips, and starting small businesses for fun. I’m also an MBA candidate at UC Berkeley Haas School of Business.

[Find me on LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/jisuhiatt/)

Content scope: Profile, work summaries, and experiments. Full case studies are linked from each work entry.