Michelle Dong
⟡ Product designer making complex platforms intuitive. Currently at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, leading design for Merlin Bird ID. Previously at Amazon Alexa.
eBird Track Editing
Led end-to-end mobile design for track editing, improving data quality for one of the world's largest participatory science projects. Released Spring 2025
Amazon Alexa
Designed a multimodal framework for collecting customer sentiment across Alexa's voice and screen experiences.
Merlin Places
Designed Merlin's first feature to help casual birders discover where to go birding. Released Spring 2026
Merlin Explore
Redesigned Merlin's Explore tab to handle location changes and search beyond default filters gracefully. Released Summer 2025 – Spring 2026
Merlin Places
Cornell Lab of Ornithology
Led end-to-end design for Merlin's first feature suggesting nearby birding spots for a specific species, using curated eBird data. MVP released to 10M+ monthly active users in April 2026
Reflection
Shipping > perfection. Scoping a MVP while designing for the future requires clarity on project goals + success metrics.
Merlin Explore
Cornell Lab of Ornithology
Reduced Explore tab support tickets by 80% through smarter location defaults and expanded search. Fully released to 10M+ monthly active users in April 2026
What I did
- Audited support tickets to define Explore's core job: showing birds seasonally relevant to your current location
- Expanded search beyond the filtered Explore list so users can find any bird, regardless of season or location
- Designed intuitive defaults for new users while preserving control for power users
- Reduced taps to update location and actually return results