John Hong
San Francisco, CA
I’m a product designer working at the intersection of hardware and software. Whether it’s a machine interface, mobile/web app, or a physical product, I design experiences that put people at the center of innovation.
My background spans physical and digital domains, enabling me to conceive and execute holistic solutions across mediums. I hold a BS in Product Design (HCI focus) and an MS in Mechanical Engineering from Stanford, where I specialized in physical product design and manufacturing.
Currently, I’m a Product Design Engineer at Sanas.AI, designing the future of live language translation.
Projects
Sanas AI
Product Design Engineer
August 2025 — June 2026
Palo Alto, CA
As the product design engineer, I owned the mobile experience from 0 to 1, spanning product strategy, UI/UX design, implementation, and production shipping. I collaborated closely with backend engineers, iOS and Android developers, and cross-functional partners to bring the app to life.
The app uses Sanas’s language translation technology to solve the challenges of interlingual communication through live translation. It turns the company’s underlying technical capabilities into a clear, usable mobile experience.
My role went beyond traditional design: I contributed directly to production code across React Native, iOS, and Android, using tools like Cursor, Xcode, Android Studio, Claude Code, and Codex. This required adapting quickly to the evolving overlap between design and engineering as AI accelerated how teams build and ship software.
We first built the app in React Native, which won Most Innovative at the 2025 Expo App Awards. We later migrated to fully native iOS and Android apps, launched them in March 2026, and have continued improving the experience since. Go try it out:https://www.sanas.ai/download-mobile-app
🍎 iOS
Onboarding
This onboarding step introduces the app’s core idea: instead of making users choose two languages every time, it asks them to set their “My language” once, creating a personalized default that lets the app automatically translate back into their language and sets it apart from conventional translation tools.
Quick Translate
For travel, quick questions, and short exchanges. Pull out your phone, tap, then translate any language to & from yours. You can use its Auto-detect capability to detect any language automatically as well. Quick Translate is a versatile, lightweight feature that can serve most everyday needs for translation.
Live Conversation
For longer, flowing conversations with someone right next to you. Place your phone between both speakers, start Live Conversation, and talk naturally in either language. Live Conversation translates both sides as each person speaks, so you can keep the conversation moving without passing the phone back and forth.
Live Listening
For understanding your surroundings, meetings, announcements, and anyone speaking nearby. Start a session with Auto-detect, and Sanas will detect any language and translate it into yours, or select the inbound language yourself for higher accuracy when you already know what you’re hearing. Live Listening is ideal for following along when you want to listen, understand, and stay present.
Video Call
For live translated calls with captions and playback. Create a room, send the invite link, and the other person can tap to join from the Sanas app. No one has to choose a language before the call starts. Video Call automatically translates each person into the other person’s language, so both sides can speak naturally and stay connected.
🤖 Android
Onboarding
Quick Translate
Live Listening
Translate Other Apps
For translating audio from another app outside of Sanas. Select Translate Other Apps in Live Listening, start the session, then leave Sanas and play audio from any app. Translate Other Apps lets you return to Sanas and see the translation live as the audio plays.